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EDWARD E. HALE’S WRITINGS, 


TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN. i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 

CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTxMAS DAY: Ten Christ- 
mas Stories. With Frontispiece by Darley. i6mo. ^1.25. 

UPS AND DOWNS. An Every-day Novel. i6mo. $1.50 

A SUMMER VACATION. Paper covers. 50 cents. 

IN HIS NAME. Square i8mo. ^i.oo. 

OUR NEW CRUSADE. Square i8mo. ^i.oo 

THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, and other Tales. 
i6mo. ^1.25. 

THE INGHAM PAPERS. i6mo. $1.25. 

WORKINGMEN’S HOMES. Illustrated. i6mo. $1.00. 

HOW TO DO IT. i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 

HIS LEVEL BEST. i6mo. I1.25. 

THE GOOD TIME COMING; or, Our New Crusade. A 
Temperance Story. Square i8mo. Paper covers. 50 cents. 

GONE TO TEXAS ; or, The Wonderful Adventures of a Pull- 
man. i6mo. $1.00. 

CRUSOE IN NEW YORK, and other Stories. i6mo. $1.00. 

WHAT CAREER? or. The Choice of a Vocation and the Use 
of Time. i6mo. $1.25. 

MRS. MERRIAM’S SCHOLARS. A Story of the “ Original 
Ten.” i6mo. |i.oo. 

SEVEN SPANISH CITIES, and the Way to Them. i6mo. 
^1.25. 

MR. TANGIER’S VACATIONS. i6mo. $1.25. 


For sale by all Booksellers. Mailed, postpaid, by th( 
Publishers, 

ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 


5 


G. T. T. 

OR, 


THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF 
A PULLMAN. 


EDWARD E. HALE. 



BOSTON: 

ROBERTS BROTHERS. 
1892 


THE OP 

CONOR6SS 

Two Codes KeceiveO 

JUL 12 1905 

Ctwngnt Entry 
jsijtaz ' ^ AAc. NO) 

11-1 H-ll 


COPY A. 


>\\ 2 - 

G 

% 


Copyright, 1877 , 

By Roberts Brothers. 


PREFACE. 


More than a generation ago, a common joke — 
one of the commonest — represented that when 
an insolvent debtor, or a rough who had been 
engaged in an “unpleasantness,” or any other 
loafer who had changed his home, wished to leave 
warning behind him where he had gone, he 
chalked upon his door the letters 

G. T. T. 

These letters were in no sort mysterious. They 
meant and were understood to mean, “ Gone to 
Texas.” 

Old enough to remember their use, when they 
were quite as intelligible as A.S.S. or LL.D., 
I have been amused and surprised to see that 
this generation does not know what they mean, 
and that a word of preface is needed to explain. 
I was so simple, and so far gone in years, that 
when I announced the title to this book I sup- 
posed all America would know, — all America 
would have known thirty years ago, — what these 


VI 


PREFACE. 


letters mean. I had no thought of a secret society 
or of other cabala. 

For myself I had an early interest in Texas. 
The first pamphlet I ever published — and that, 
I see, was a generation ago — was an appeal to 
New England men and women to emigrate to 
Texas. It was printed in the month of March, 
1845. I had heard at Washington, that winter, 
most of the great debates in which the annexa- 
tion of Texas, and so much more of the later 
history of the country, were decided on. I re- 
turned to Massachusetts, convinced that the 
simplest solution of the southern question was 
in a vigorous and large emigration of northern 
men into that New Empire, to whose fortunes 
ours had been linked by the resolutions of annex- 
ation. And so I wrote and published the little 
pamphlet of which I speak, under the title “ How 
to conquer Texas before Texas conquers us.” It 
was an eager appeal for emigration. At that 
time I should have been glad to join any colony 
which would have tried that adventure. 

But, so far as I learned, no other New Eng- 
lander wanted to go. The great part of the only 
edition of my modest pamphlet remains unsold 
on my hands. The law, not then well under- 
stood, was yet true, — that freemen would not 


PREFACE. 


vii 


emigrate into a slave State, unless they had 
slaves to take with them. It was as true as was 
the other law that slave-holders would not emi- 
grate into neutral territory. The emigration 
into Texas, never very rapid before the war, 
went on with all the difficulties which check 
emigration into regions which permit the insti- 
tution of slavery. 

The truth of the principle, that organized 
emigration is the best method, if indeed it is not 
the only method, by which an old community 
can direct the policy of a new State, was left to 
be verified in 1854 and 1855, by the organization 
of the Emigrant Aid Company, and the coloni- 
zation of Kansas under the admirable lead of 
Mr. Eli Thayer. The great issue was then first 
made on a fair field, and the great battle was 
then first won. As an officer of that company, 
I had some correspondence with the German 
free-state men in Texas. 

Having taken this sort of personal interest in 
Texas long ago, I had always hoped to see for 
myself the beauties of a region which all people 
unite in praising. By a queer accident, such as 
will happen even to writers who are “not too 
bold,” it turned out, unexpectedly to me, that a 
hero of mine, named Philip Nolan, had a god- 


VI 11 


PREFACE. 


father of the same name, who really opened up 
Texas to American discovery and adventure in 
the year i8oi. I gladly embraced a favorable 
opportunity to go in person, over the routes of 
his adventure there ; and in this little story I have 
detailed some of the modest adventures of travel- 
lers in Texas in these later times. Let me hope 
that the little book may tempt some invalid to 
whom is recommended a milder winter than ours 
in Norumbega, to go to dear San Antonio, rather 
than to try the rough sea waves, — exile from 
country, — and the grausome horrors of a foreign 
language in Mentone or at Nice. Nor let any 
such unknown friend be deterred by the dangers 
which threatened Effie and Hester on the prai- 
ries. The railroad to San Antonio has been 
finished since they were there ; and “ beauty in 
distress,” may now go from Halifax to “ San 
Antone ” without sullying a white satin slipper, 
if she pleases. Beauty in distress may recline 
on the sofas of a palace car all the way, nor leave 
one palace for another, but under the shelter of a 
station. 

True, to do this, beauty in distress must not 
pass through Boston. There beauty would have 
to be transferred by cab or coach from station 
to station. If we found that necessary at Hearne 


PREFACE. 


IX 


or Hempstead, as it is not, we should say, “ So 
much for barbarous Texas.” 

The emigration, which could not be hurried in 
1845, is now pouring into Texas in an unexampled 
stream. The population doubles every five years. 
Why not } The climate is peerless. The soil 
seems inexhaustible ; the policy of the State is 
such, that you have your farm for the asking. 
And slavery — the obstacle that stood in the way 
thirty years ago — is at an end for ever. 

^‘Ten years hence, we will tell you who your 
President will be. You will not have to trouble 
yourselves then.” This is the joking remark of 
intelligent Texan gentlemen now to northern 
travellers. 

Why not ? The population of Texas is now, 
at least, i,6(X),ooo. If it is 3,000,000 in 1880, 
and 7,000,000 in 1887, will any combination of 
politics choose a President then whom Texas 
does not prefer ^ 

Since these sheets began to pass the press, I 
have lighted on an old tract by Samuel Sewall 
(the judge of Whittier’s poem, the same who 
hung the witches), written to prove, from the 
irrefragable evidence of the books of Daniel and 
the Revelation, that in Texas, or, as he calls it, 
'' the northern part of the province of Mexico,” is 


X 


PREFACE. 


the seat predestined of the “New Jerusalem,” — 
the site of the city which was to descend from 
heaven. 

Columbus expected to find it, where modern 
research found Pitcairn’s Island, at the antipodes 
of the old Jerusalem. Quien sabef 

There are who say that we carry heaven with 
us, and I believe them. If so, dear reader, may 
you and I find old Sewall’s prophecy good, when 
next we take a Pullman palace, and 

G. T. T. 

EDWARD E. HALE. 


In the Palace “ Pittsfield,” 

Lake Shore Railroad, 

Near Ashtabula Bridge, 
June 17, St. Botolph’s Day, 1877. 


G. T. T.; 

OR, 

THE WONDERFUL ADVENTURES OF 
A PULLMAN. 


CHAPTER 1. 

“ T OWER six,” said the clerk. 

“ But I want the whole section.” 

Then you can have all six ; or, if you please, 
all of seven.” 

“Six is very well ; how much?” said she. 

This little dialogue passed at the window of 
the Palace Car Office at the Jersey side of the 
river, at the station of Tom Scott’s railroad, 
which begins at Jersey City and from that point 
goes — everywhere. 

She was Hester Sutphen, the heroine of this 
little story. 

The clerk is not the hero. We shall never, 
never hear of him again unless we go somewhere 
by that route, and he says “Lower six” to us, as 
we will hope. 

For, as all travellers know, six and seven are 
two of the best possible sections in a Pullman’s 


6 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Palace. There is no difference between six and 
five if the even numbers are on one side and the 
odd on another. About other numbers you may 
be confused, but not about five, six, seven, and 
eight. They cannot be over the wheels, nor next 
the stove, nor next the door. 

Now, if you are to live in a Palace, what right 
have you to ask any thing else than that you shall 
not be over the wheels, or next the stove, or near 
the door } 

Certainly Hester Sutphen asked nothing else. 
She returned to her companion, Euphemia, told 
her that all was well, and, now that they were 
sure of that, they went to breakfast together. 
Although this story is written by the most faith- 
ful disciple of Jacob Abbott in the art of story- 
telling, the reader will not be informed of what 
the breakfast consisted. Other breakfasts, as 
well as dinners and suppers, will be described in 
their order. It is enough to say that they were 
in that admirable station house which Mr. Tom 
Scott, whoever he may be (I have not the slight- 
est idea), or some subordinate of his, has erected 
on the Jersey side, to the delight of all New Eng- 
landers who travel, and to the equal disgust of 
the oyster dealers on the North River side of the 
city of New York. For the New Englanders who 


OF A PULLMAN. 


7 


go West and South are now able to have a good 
breakfast and to engage good sleeping berths also, 
and the oystermen lose the opportunity, which 
they once had, of asking the travelling wise men 
from the East what are the relations between the 
true, the good, and the beautiful. 

They went to breakfast (the girls — not the 
oystermen), then they took as interesting a walk 
as they could in Jersey City — which is not so 
very entertaining a place when you do not know 
where to go, and cross boys are just opening the 
shops — then they returned to the great wait- 
ing-room and bought a “Tribune” and looked at 
some Sisters of Charity. 

They wanted to buy a “ Herald,” but were afraid 
this would not look reputable for lone ladies. 

Then the great door opened, and they were per- 
mitted to go to their Palace. The Palace was 
named the “ Golconda.” They were the first in- 
mates who that day entered its halls. 

“Oh, my queen!” cried Hester. “You are at 
last in the Palace which is to be your home — 
who shall say how long ? Here, great princess, 
is your throne,” and she pointed to the eastern 
seat of Six. “Behold in me the humblest of 
your subjects.” 

“Well, dear subject,” said Effie, laughing, “I 


8 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


don’t know how to act very well. Could you 
hang up this strap — and where in the world do 
you put your umbrella in a Palace.?” 

For Effie Abgar had never been in a Palace 
before. Hester, as you have seen, had more ex- 
perience. Hester, indeed, was the experienced 
person of this party in American travel. For 
Hester had once gone from New Ipswich to 
Niagara Falls, and from Niagara P'alls she had 
gone back to New Ipswich. 

On this occasion Hester was on her way to 
San Antonio, in Texas, with the intention of 
opening there a school, or as the habit of that 
country calls it, an Academy” for young ladies, 
if she found a good opening. If she did not find 
it, she proposed to look for another. For Hester 
was tired of stoves and furnaces, of coal bills and 
wood bills, of dirty hands and smoking chimneys, 
and the thousand other annoyances which wait 
on the latitude of forty-three on the Atlantic sea- 
board. And Hester was a born lover of flowers 
also. She had that “sixth sense,” — for a sixth 
sense it is, — by which some people love flowers 
for flowers’ sake; not because they are pretty, or 
sweet to smell, or graceful, or suggestive, or ob- 
jective, or subjective; nor because they are 
cheap; nor because they are the “fugitive poetry 


OF A PULLMAN. 


9 


of nature” — nor for any other reason which can 
be assigned — but because they are flowers. And 
so it had happened that when in the autumn of 
the last year, after the armistice of a summer 
vacation, the battle of life began again for Hester 
Sutphen and she went loyally to her guns, she 
had said to herself — and in her journal she had 
written — reverently and carefully: 

“As the Lord liveth — if mamma is well next 
spring, and George and Hattie, and the .children 
— if all seems to be doing well here, I will Go to 
Texas to prospect in the spring, and I will not 
spend the next winter here.” 

All this she had written with extra care in her 
diary — and it was all she did write that night. 
“Prospect” was her little joke. The next night 
she wrote, in a less formal hand, “ Wrote to Effle 
to coax her to G. T. T. with me. If she will go 
it will be perfect.” 

And Effie had determined to go. She had no 
idea of staying there ; but she was glad of the 
chance of the journey. Effle had been hard at 
work in her studio all the winter, drawing and 
painting — that was a joy and delight to her — 
and trying to teach other people to draw and 
paint — that was not so satisfactory. Effle was 
delighted at the prospect of beginning out-door 


10 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


work near two months earlier than would be pos- 
sible in Boston latitudes. She arranged with the 
other teachers and with Philip — packed her 
charcoals and her tubes of colors — met Hester 
when the hour came, at the Providence station in 
Boston — and thus they came to be at Jersey 
City, as you have been told. 

It is always interesting to be the first occupant 
of an empty Palace. I suppose Queen Victoria 
and Pope Pius and Dom Pedro have learned that. 
But many other people have learned it also, whose 
heads have never chafed under crowns. You sit 
in your Palace — how happy if you have “six” or 
“seven” to sit in ! — and as these other people 
come in for a moment you imagine them to be 
subjects. While they are sitting down, they are, 
for their instant of discomfort, your inferiors. 
Then they rise to be your peers, as they also as- 
sume their thrones ; and they, with you, examine 
the new subjects as they enter. Hester and Effie 
had not a large nor a very interesting troupe of 
fellow-travellers. There was a man with a sick 
wife ; there were a few young men whom the ex- 
perienced Hester pronounced to be “drummers;” 
there was an old gentleman who put himself in the 
wrong car, and had to be transferred to the Xenia 
as soon as the tickets were shown ; and a few old 


OF A PULLMAN. 


I 


ladies, who left at Trenton or other Jersey sta- 
tions. “Rather a humdrum set,” said Hester. 
But to both the girls it was all new; and both of 
them were ready, from every chance, to make an 
adventure for a novel. 

I have called them “girls.” Will they ever for- 
give me.^ But how can I call them “young 
women” } Did I not hold them both at the font 
in my arms ? 

They brought out their novels. Hester had 
“The Strange Adventures of a Phaeton,” that 
charming story of Black’s which lends its name 
to our little tale. If only “ the mantel-piece of 
my predecessor would fall upon my head ! ” 
Effie had — no matter what. She read next to 
nothing. Her sketch book took her off from her 
reading. The droll old Jersey farmer asleep on 
his throne ; the picturesque newsboys at New- 
ark ; the two stone posts of the college — is it a 
college.^ — at Brunswick ; — just a hint of this and 
a hint of that, when the time would be up, and 
the train would dash away, and Effie had to take 
her chances of remembering the unfinished cor- 
ners of her memory sketch. She took out her 
Prince’s Patent Protean Pen — invaluable re- 
source of the traveller. The blessing of a Palace 
on Tom ScotPs roads, or Commodore Vander- 


12 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


bilt’s, is that he who rides can not only read but 
write. And so Effie was able to write her first 
letter home. No ! it is not worth while to copy 
it. Though, really, this story would be best 
written if I copied all of those two girls’ letters ; 
and I have a great mind to. I will give you just 
a scrap of this one, but I will not promise any 
more. 

On the Wing, March 28, ’76. 

Dear Old Phil, — 

. . . After eating our breakfast we went out to 

see the lions of Jersey City ; and we found it a most 
interesting place. They have wooden awnings in 
front of the shops. We saw a whole calf in a 
butcher’s shop, with his head and feet off, and his 
hair on — quite grisly to look at. Also we saw some 
Balm of Gilead trees. On the whole, it is a good 
deal like Chelsea. The country is charming as we 
ride. I like the Jersey flats near Newark, which 
make me think a little of the country Millet drew. 
The browns and yellows were interesting and relieved 
by a good deal of spring color as we came on. The 
wheat is coming up, and we have seen a little green 
grass, bright green in some places. The willows are 
coming on, and I do not doubt that we should have 
found flowers if we could have looked for them. 

And so on. 

The mailing of this letter gave rise to a little 
adventure. The drummers in the car somehow 


OF A PULLMAN. 


13 


sat together, — a little further front than these 
two girls. As they sat, the high backs of their 
seats protected them in a measure from the view 
of people behind, and so it was that Hester could 
not see at all and Effie only see in part the pro- 
file of a young face turned away from the window 
and looking down on a book. Effie made Hester 
draw close to her, that she might see this finely 
chiselled profile and the pretty fall of the girl’s 
eyelids as she read. Then she began speculating 
as to how they should get acquainted, how this 
poor girl could be rescued from that crowd of 
men who surrounded her. The gap through 
which they saw her closed up in a moment more, 
as one of the drummers put his hat on ; so the 
girls could not see the pretty face any longer. 

Only it was not pretty,” said Effie. “ I never 
said it was pretty ; I said it was fine.” 

“ Fine or pretty, Effie, she must have a name 
all the same. I shall call her Fanny, Fanny Mac- 
Pherson.” 

“ Fanny fiddlestick ! She shall be named Price, 
Fanny Price.” 

‘‘As if we were at Mansfield Park indeed ! She 
is not a Fanny Price at all. I will give up the 
Fanny, if you like, but never the MacPherson. 
Honora MacPherson. How will that do.^” 


14 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


At this moment there was a motion among the 
drummers. He who was nearest the passage, 
rose, stretched his arms and yawned, and took 
down his hat. Honora MacPherson did the same 
and took down hers, and, to the disgust of Eflfie 
and the delight of Hester, stepped out with his 
companion, a vigorous, well-formed man with an 
Ulster on. All that the girls had seen was the 
rather well-cut profile, and from that they had 
constructed their romance. As the day passed 
the company of the drummers diminished. One 
left the train at Easton, two at Philadelphia, and 
one somewhere else. Honora MacPherson and 
his companion in “ eleven ” remained however, 
with occasional absences in the smoking car. 

When Effie’s letter was finished, as they drew 
up at Lancaster, she walked forward to call the 
porter to ask him to post it. The porter was not 
in his place. She came back with it, meaning to 
look for him at the other end, when Honora Mac- 
Pherson touched his hat and said, 

“ Shall I post your letter, madam ^ ” 

“ If you will be so kind,” said she. 

And these were the first words they ever said 
to each other. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


15 


CHAPTER II. 

two you;ng men were named Haydock 
and Brinkerhoff. 

Neither of them was named Honora MacPher- 
son, nor had either of them ever known any one 
who was named Honora MacPherson. 

It was Frederic Haydock who took Effie’s letter 
and posted it. It is an open question, not yet 
decided by casuists or writers on etiquette, 
whether he had the right, or had not, to read the 
address ; or whether, having the right, it would 
be quite gentlemanly for him to read it. 

For the true gentleman is distinguished by his 
abating something from his right. 

However this may be, Frederic Haydock did 
read the address, after he had run along the 
platform, and while he opened the box to post 
the letter. 

When he returned to his seat, his friend Hiram 
said, “ Who did your inamorata write to ? ” 

“ She wrote to Philip Abgar, 199 i-9th Tremont 


i6 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Street, Boston. I suppose it is her husband,” 
said Haydock. 

The two young men were not accidental travel- 
ling companions. They were boy friends who had 
been parted for many years, had met by accident 
in New York, and had gladly stretched and 
squeezed their appointments a little that they 
might manage to start together on this journey. 
They had been fellow-students in Antioch Col- 
lege when they were fifteen years younger, when 
indeed they were scarcely more than boys. The 
college had been broken up by the war, and they 
had not seen each other again now for fifteen 
years. Well-nigh thirty years old, they ran against 
each other in Broadway. Whiskers, moustaches. 
Ulsters, look of care, change of expression, all 
were not enough for a disguise. They were boys 
still. They stopped as if it had all been a dream ; 
as if there had been no Five Forks, and no 
Crook’s Mills, no Battle of the Clouds, and no 
Beaufort ; as if both of them had left recitations 
in physical geography yesterday, and as if they 
had happened to miss each other at prayers this 
morning. 

“ How are you, old fellow 

“ Hiram, how are you } ” 

These had been the salutations of recognition 
after fifteen years. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


17 


They were not both drummers, as the subtle 
Hester had fancied them. Only Hiram Brinker- 
hoff was a drummer. Nor would he have called 
himself by that name, though he had too much 
sense to resent it, were it applied good-naturedly. 
He was a travelling agent of a large house of 
druggists, and his district was south of the Ohio 
and west of the Mississippi. Haydock had been, 
since the war, the postmaster of St. Auguste in 
Louisiana. He had come home to Manitowoc 
this summer to visit his father and mother, and 
he took the occasion to come East as far as New 
York, which he had never seen. 

It was of course that they should establish 
themselves at once at the same hotel ; that they 
should spend every hour of the next week to- 
gether, and then that they should so cut and carve 
their plans as to start on this journey at the same 
time. 

Even after the journey had begun they were by 
no means talked dry. How had they missed each 
other, and how close were they to each other in 
the army ? How near did the transport, in which 
Hiram was, pass to the camp of Fred’s regi- 
ment ! A thousand such matters as these kept 
starting up afresh, and each one, as it started, 
opened up a thousand more. They had of course 


i8 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


to pass the time of day with their companions 
who were only starting on shorter expeditions ; 
but, as these gentlemen dropped off one after 
another, the two young men found the afternoon 
devoted itself not so much to their novels or 
newspapers as to good steady talk, such as not 
even a week in the city had given them a chance 
for. ^ ' 

It is not to be pretended, however, that they 
were so much absorbed in each other, through the 
day’s ride, as to be ignorant of the presence of 
two pleasing, pretty, and ladylike young women 
on the other side of the Palace, although “ elev- 
en” were in front of “six,” as the “Golconda” 
was then running. 

Honora MacPherson, alias Frederic Haydock, 
had caught sight of Mrs. Abgar’s face before she 
caught sight of his. And it is very certain that 
he did not mistake her for a man when she mis- 
took him for a woman. As he sat riding back- 
ward, he had better opportunities for studying 
the ladies’ manner, without obtrusiveness, than 
had Hiram. Without thinking much of the la- 
dies, they did from time to time confide to each 
other their observations, and, in the bungling 
style of men, gradually created a theory which 
accounted for the existence of the other couple, 


OF A PULLMAN. 


19 


much as Hester had done, though not, perhaps, 
so accurately. 

“Times have changed indeed,” said Hiram, as 
the tireless train at last paused — so a fish-hawk 
rests before pouncing for his food — just as they 
swept into Lancaster. “ I remember this place 
when the one horse, one track, branched off from 
the State Road to take us to Harrisburg ; when a 
long bench to step upon seemed to be the only 
^ depot ’ convenience. My father used to tell of a 
woman who sold crullers, pretzels, and apples on 
a table on the south side of the track, who was so 
beautiful that all the passengers clustered on that 
side to see her.” 

Saying this, Hiram looked out of the Palace, 
and Frederic as well ; but there was no Her- 
mione, — daughter of that remembered Helen, 
there. It was as Fred turned back from looking 
for her that Efifie gave to him her letter. 

Anybody who has never seen other farms than 
Effie and Hester had seen in Massachusetts finds 
a thousand wonderful sights' in the large-scale 
farming of Pennsylvania: barns more stately 
than churches, and fields without fences and 
without woods just growing green as the wheat 
starts, or just growing white as a snow flurry 
falls. The girls were at their window studying 


20 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Pennsylvania agriculture a great deal of the after- 
noon. The men had seen a great deal of large- 
scale farming. They had little to see, but much 
to talk of. An hour passed before either party 
knew it, and the train swept into Harrisburg to 
the surprise of all — when, of a sudden, martial 
music welcomed them : 

“ See ! the conquering hero comes ! ” 

“A little surprise I arranged for you,” said 
Brinkerhoff to Haydock. 

“ O my queen ! ” said Hester, at the same mo- 
ment, “as you first place your royal foot upon 
the ground, you see that your lieges are assem- 
bled to do you honor.” 

“ Are we to get out } ” asked Effie. 

“ Your majesty should say ‘ are we to alight } ’ ” 
replied Hester. “In the first place, queens al- 
ways alight ; in the second place, the word ‘ get ’ 
is gradually getting itself banished from all re- 
spectable seminaries and other institutions of 
learning. And your majesty will perhaps regard 
yourself as under my instruction for this journey 
for the correction of 3mur majesty’s cacology. To 
answer your majesty’s question, I think we will 
get out, and spend our twenty-five minutes in 
examining the institutions of the capital of Penn- 
sylvania.” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


21 


So they “alighted.” There was no friendly 
porter to help, the other passengers were all gone ; 
and, rather to their dismay, the girls found that 
they had jumped down upon a snow-bound plat- 
form into the midst of a military band, a company 
of soldiers, and a body of men with badges, who 
were stepping forth and back, as sundry well- 
meaning marshals bade them, whose own ideas 
were a little indefinite. True, they all meant to 
be eventually collectors of customs or postmasters, 
as the result of that day’s marshalling. But just 
how this particular procession was to be mar- 
shalled, in order that this result might be gained, 
no particular marshal knew. 

Nor did Hester, the lady-chamberlain in the 
midst of them, know which way she was to mar- 
shal her queen. 

At that moment the band close to her struck up 
“March, march, Eskdale and Teviotsdale.” 

Hester was just in advance of Effie. She was 
mad with herself because she was confused. She 
was confused because she was mad. Mad and 
confused, she welcomed Fred Haydock as an 
angel of light when he touched his hat and 
said, “ Let me show you the way, madam ! ” In- 
deed she could not be certain, afterwards, that 
for just an instant, as he led her between two 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


22 


very fussy marshals and separated two platoons 
of delegates for her, she could not be certain 
that, just for that instant, she did not take his 
arm. 

And these were the first words he ever spoke 
to her ! 

An instant more, and all peril was over. The 
ladies were both in the dining-room, and some 
nice Pennsylvania girls were asking them if they 
would dine. 

It had been very easy, in the retreat of the 
studio, to say they would eat sandwiches all the 
way till they came to Cincinnati. But with those 
nice white table-cloths, with spoons shining 
brighter than silver, with celery rising sea-green 
from the water, like Aphrodite herself, to allure 
them, with a certain feminine craving for Thea 
Bohea goading them on — who was Hester, who 
was Effie, that they should refuse } 

“ Have we time enough ? ” 

Twenty-five minutes, madam. Rather more 
to-day because of the delegates, madam. Soup, 
madam ? No P'ish ? Troutfreshcodsaltcodfresh 
mackerelsaltmackerelroastbeefboiledbeef roastmu 
ttonboiledmutton roastturkeyboiledturkeyboiledh 
amplainsausageBolognasausagecoldtongue } ” 

Effie was aghast. But her lady-chamberlain 


OF A PULLMAN. 


23 


selected for her, and in a few minutes they were 
well engaged. The “ pretty waiter girls ” had 
provided for them both, when the hospitable 
chief of staff came to the table leading two gen- 
tlemen who did not seem to be delegates, to whom 
he gave vacant seats at the same table. 

The ladies saw on the instant that the two 
gentlemen were the drummers of section Eleven. 

Hester bowed and smiled. 

Frederic explained, ‘*My friend here was lost 
among the delegates. I believe if I had not res- 
cued him he would have been marched to the 
State House to vote for Pennsylvania’s favorite 
son.” 

Hiram tried to speak, laughed, choked himself 
with a fish-bone, and retired from the table cough- 
ing and with his face red. 

He did not die suddenly, however, but reap- 
peared in an instant. 

Hester had not the slightest idea of entering 
into conversation with strangers. But she asked 
before she knew it, “Pray what is the band, — 
who are all these people } 

Then Frederic explained that the next day 
there was to be a convention to nominate dele- 
gates to Cincinnati ; that these were the Eastern 
delegates attending this State convention, and 


24 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


that, as the badges in their hats showed, they 
were prepared to give the Presidency to Gov. 
Hartranft, Pennsylvania’s favorite son. 

“ My dear,” whispered Efide, I am horribly 
ignorant. But I never heard of him before.” 

“Nor I, my dear; but we will be drawn by wild 
horses before we will confess it.” 

Then Hiram and Frederic began talking very 
pleasant and intelligible politics with each other, 
and they talked very well, conscious that two 
very pretty women were hearing them. The 
pretty women listened with all their ears, but 
pretended not to, because they had not been 
introduced to these gentlemen. There was a 
little interruption when the waiter girls offered 

“ Plumpuddingindianpuddingricepuddingqueenspu 
ddingpumpkinpieapplepiedamsonpiepeachpievanillaic 
ecreamlemonicecream.” 

They all made their selections. But there was 
no more talk of politics. When the desserts were 
all secured, Hiram was telling a funny story 
of old Harris the ferryman, who determined a 
generation in advance that Harrisburg should be 
the capital of Pennsylvania. 

Twenty-five minutes is a long time for dinner, 
when you think it is no time at all. 

The fatal bell struck, the gentlemen led the 


OF A PULLMAN. 


25 


way to the “ Golconda,” the ladies took their 
hands ds they stepped into the Palace, the bell 
struck again and they were under way. 

A gray, grim sunset, but yet a sunset, on the 
other side the river, the river gray, and cold, and 
cross, then a little island white with snow, and 
bearded with birches, and willows, and balm of 
Gilead trees, — “ Is this the Juniata yet } ” “ I 

do not know.” “This must be the Juniata.” 
“ No, this is the Susquehanna, still.” “ I do not 
know.” “ No — well — it makes no difference.” 

But the girls’ doubts were solved at last, when 
in “ eleven,” with an exquisite tenor, one of the 
young men — they did not know which — broke 
out with : 

“Wild roved an Indian girl, 

Bright Alfarata, 

Where .sweep the waters of 
The blue Juniata. 

“ Swift as an antelope 

Through the forest going. 

Loose were her jetty locks 
In wavy tresses flowing.” 

And so on, and so on, in the verses of “The Blue 
Juniata,” which all girls sang a generation ago, 
but which Young America has forgotten. 

“ Blue Juniata is yellow enough just now.” 

Then he stopped for a minute, and in a half 


26 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


undertone in the darkness, said to his compan- 
ion, “ But for once that I have sung those words 
to this air, I have sung these a million times : 

“ ‘ Who is my darling girl — 

Chipper and cheery ? 

Amy is my darling girl, — 

And Amy is my deary.’ ” 

“ You are as much in love with her as you used 
to be in Yellow Springs.” 

“ As much ! A hundred times more ! ” 


A pity that so pretty a song as “ Blue Juniata ” 
should drift out of the memories of the young 
people of sixteen and seventeen years old. It is 
a pretty specimen of that school of song, which 
may be called the “ American.” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


27 


THE BLUE JUNIATA. 



Bright Alfarata, 

Where sweep the waters of 
The blue Juniata ; 

Swift as an antelope, 

Through the forest going, 
Loose were her jetty locks 
In wavy tresses flowing. 


28 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Gay was the mountain song, 

Of bright Alfarata, 

Where sweep the waters of 
The blue Juniata ; 

Strong and true my arrows are, 

In my painted quiver. 

Swift goes my light canoe 
Adown the rapid river. 

Bold is my warrior true. 

The love of Alfarata, 

Proud waves his snowy plume 
Along the Juniata ; 

Soft and low he speaks to me. 

And then his war cry sounding. 
Rings his voice in thunder loud 
From height to height resounding. 

So sang the Indian girl, 

Bright Alfarata, 

Where sweep the waters of 
The blue Juniata ; 

Fleeting years have borne away 
The voice of Alfarata, 

Still sweeps the river on. 

The blue Juniata. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


29 


CHAPTER III. 

TT is a pity, but so it is. If you choose to sleep 
in a Palace, you cannot see more than if you 
slept in a hovel. 

And so our heroine and our heroine’s friend 
climbed the Alleghanies, and slid down the Alle- 
ghanies, as if there were no Alleghanies at all. 
They came to Pittsburg, and they went from 
Pittsburg as if there were no Pittsburg at all. It 
was as if Braddock had never blundered, as if 
France had never conquered, as if Washington 
had never covered the retreat, as if Pitt had never 
become Chatham. No Pittsburg for our heroine 
and our heroine’s friend ! 

Only the Palace rested a little from its bump- 
ing in the station at Pittsburg, and Hettie and 
Effie had a little quiet dream of heaven while it 
rested ; and then, as it started again on its re- 
lentless course, they half waked, half slept, and 
dreamed of all the wretchednesses that their lives 
had ever known. 


30 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


So they were whirled relentlessly across the 
“ Pan Handle,” by which domestic name that 
funny strip of West Virginia is known which 
shoots up like an inverted icicle between Penn- 
sylvania and Ohio. So they crossed, half con- 
scious and half unconscious, the Ohio River. 
But the longest night will end ; and at last both 
girls had brushed their hair, and had otherwise 
adjusted their toilet, and found themselves look- 
ing out on the country, trying to make out in 
what Ohio differed from Pennsylvania, but a good 
deal puzzled in doing so by the “ areas of snow,” 
as Gen. Myers put it that day. For under snow 
all lands are much the same. 

With all their pluck, also, the two girls felt 
wretchedly, and, if either of them had been com- 
fortably alone, she would have been glad to cry. 
This had been actually Effie’s first night in a 
Palace, and she had slept miserably. She even 
thought she had not slept at all. Hester’s former 
experience had been not in vain. But she, also, 
had been bumped and tossed, and knew that the 
night had been the longest night but one she had 
ever known. That one was her first night in a 
Palace. What then had this night been to 
Effie.? 

Still, both the girls were brave. They had de- 


OF A PULLMAN. 


31 


termined to go to Texas together in a Palace 
were there no other way. And neither would, 
at the first blush, confess to the other the 
misery she had undergone. Each, instructed 
by the other, tottered her shaky way to the 
washroom. Each was a little refreshed by the 
cold water. Each, before the wildly waving 
mirror, “ did her hair.” And so they sat to- 
gether, as if no night of misery had intervened, 
in “lower six,” and “lower six” made believe, in 
its silent hypocrisy, that it never was any thing 
but a large Ute d tete sofa. As if they did not 
know, and it did not know, and all the porters 
and all the newspapers, that it was 

“ Two beds by night, a pair of seats by day.” 
Where they were, the girls could only guess by 
their watches, and by the “Traveller’s Official 
Guide.” They had been wise enough, not to be 
penny-wise, but to “ buy the best.” The porter 
was far too busy, in readjusting “seven” and 
“ nine ” and “ thirteen,” to tell them the names 
of stations. Indeed the girls were too much 
interested in his deft work, which they had 
watched with the sympathy of professional 
housekeepers, even to ask them. Effie twitted 
Hester that she did not know the names of the 
“ creeks ” and the villages as they passed them. 


32 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


“What is the use of teaching so much com- 
parative geography, my dear Hettie, if you 
cannot distinguish Coshocton from West La- 
fayette when you see it? For my part, I am 
only an artist. I am interested in the blue un- 
der the edge of that drift. But you, you are 
a school-mistress, and yet you cannot tell me 
when we come to Dresden.” 

No. Hester avowed in the secrecy of the 
Palace that she had never even heard of Dres- 
den, of Frazeysburg, of Canesville, or of Coshoc- 
ton. In each of these towns readers of this tale 
will follow her travels. How gladly would she 
have rested her weary head in one of them ! 

“ But wisest Fate said, No ! ” 

And they whirled on. 

The girls learned afterwards from a friendly 
old lady of more experience to hide a Boston 
cracker under the pillow and to eat it before 
moving in the morning. But “ wit comes after- 
wards,” says the Yankee proverb, and so does 
wisdom. At Dresden Junction they were hardly 
settled enough to know any thing but that they 
were faint and wretched. It was an hour before 
the screaming wild beast which dragged them 
on was hungry again or thirsty. When they 
stopped at Newark to feed him, Effie looked out 
wistfully. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


33 


But the platform at Newark was snow-covered, 
and the porter was discouraging. 

The girls doubted. Just then he whom they 
had called Honora MacPherson came up in the 
car. On a plate he bore a single mug of New- 
ark coffee. 

“ Will you try a cup of coffee, ladies } ” he 
said. “ It is very poor coffee, but I believe it is 
better than nothing. You will have no other 
chance till we come to Columbus.” 

“ Gentleman through and through ” — this was 
the one thought of both the girls. Efhe rallied 
first to speak, thanked him and took the cup. 
The mixture was not of that exquisite warm, 
reddish brown as delicious to artists as to epi- 
cures — it was of a hard, cold gray, with large 
black spots floating in it. But it was warm. 
There was a slight sense of stimulant in it, 
though the taste was vile ; yet there was reason 
to believe that a part at least of the compound 
had drunk in the temper of a Brazilian sun. 
Effie despatched her half. Hettie did the same 
by hers, and looked for the porter. He was no- 
where. But Honora MacPherson reappeared. 
Hester had her two nickels ready. 

“Is that right 

“ Quite right,” said he, and he smiled. So 
their acquaintance was advancing. 

3 


34 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


On the strength of those doubly-baked brown 
bread crusts mingled with charred Rio, and of a 
sandwich, a little dry, which emerged from the 
lunch basket, these two girls went to Columbus. 
Columbus himself, when, about half a league 
from the little seaport of Palos, standing at the 
door of the convent dedicated to Saint Mary : 

“ He asked of the Porter 
A little Bread and Water 
For his Child,” 

was not more glad to rest from his wanderings 
than were they. But it is not for this tale to 
describe in detail the white napkins, the brilliant 
spoons, the brown broiled chicken, the golden 
omelette, the rich gravy of the steak, the crisp 
crackle of the potato, the mosaic of the waffle 
or the ophir tone of the syrup, of the meal which 
lay before them. The people of Ohio have a 
proud proverb that “ No man was ever hungry in 
Ohio.” This may be true of men who reside 
th'ere. Of these two girls, who had been shaken 
like obstinate medicine vials for seven hours and 
fifty minutes since they left Steubenville, one 
hundred and ninety-three miles behind, it was 
not true. They were so hungry that they did 
not know that they were hungry till the brown 
coffee stood before them, and then, at the sug- 


OF A PULLMAN. 


35 


gestion of the warm milk and Alderney cream, 
blushed with that blush of a brunette in Seville 
which already a vain effort has been made to de- 
scribe. As one of them is a heroine, and an- 
other a heroine’s friend, it will not be well to tell 
what they ate and what they did not eat before 
they bade their hospitable host farewell and 
mounted the snowy steps of the “ Golconda ” 
once more. 

“ I am glad she is named the ‘ Golconda ’ and 
I am glad it snows. I feel as if I were going 


‘ From Greenland’s icy mountains 
To India’s coral strand.’” 


36 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


CHAPTER IV. 

TT was nearly three in the afternoon before they 
came into Cincinnati. Effie thought they 
were underground ; but this was her mistake, 
though it was dark in the station. The South- 
ards, father and son, were there to meet them 
with their own carriage ; and after a mysterious 
ride — all rides in a new city are mysterious — 
now up hill, and now by long level ways, but 
never down hill by any accident — they came to 
the exuberant welcome of the Southards’ home. 
Fanny herself was at the door, unknown South- 
ard boys helped with the straps and bags, and 
the two travel-worn girls were instantly at home. 
How like home it all was — and how unlike ! 

And when they were clean again, and all sat 
together at the early dinner which P'anny had 
ordered for them, she compelled them to open all 
their plans ; and, in her turn, she opened hers. 
Soon it appeared that she had arranged for this 
and that and another excursion and enterprise. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


37 


which would require six weeks’ stay. On their 
part they had modestly prepared to go on the 
next morning. Against this all the hospitality of 
Ohio protested, and all the memories of New Eng- 
land ; and it ended, as such discussions always 
end, in the girls agreeing to spend three days : 
item, the rest of this Tuesday, the whole of 
Wednesday, and as much of Thursday as would 
pass before they should take the “ General 
Lytle” and go down to Louisville. 

“ I thought we were going all the way in a Pal- 
ace,” said Effie, not very sorry to be relieved. 

“My dear Miss Effie,” said John Southard, “do 
not you know that your own Mr. Everett said 
that one of our steamers is a palace above and a 
warehouse below } ” 

Effie did not know it, but it was not the last 
time that she found out that she was to be made 
responsible for all the wit and all the wisdom, as 
well as for all the folly and all the forgetfulness, 
of all New Englanders. 

“You are but a feeble folk,” said John South- 
ard, “and we cannot pretend to distinguish be- 
tween you. Do not be surprised if I call you 
Miss Marshall.” 

Effie did not push the conversation. But after- 
ward she asked Mrs. Southard who Miss Marshall 


was. 


38 


WONDERFUL AD VENTURES 


My dear, she was the most beautiful woman, 
and the loveliest too, who ever was seen since 
Helen” 

So Effie found she was in high favor with John 
Southard. 

Nobody in Cincinnati remembered the time 
when at ten o’clock in the morning he had been 
seen outside his own office or one of the Courts 
of Ohio. But on the Wednesday of the visit he 
sat on the front seat of his carriage at that hour, 
twirling his whip, and waiting — only thirty sec- 
onds— for his wife and the two girls, that he 
might drive them out of town on a visit to a 
friend of his who lived in a real palace. 

“ Not one of your Yankee catacombs on wheels. 
Miss Effie,” he said. And up and up — still up 
and up — the stout bays pulled the carriage, with 
the laughing group, till they came into the open 
country, and then by pleasant roads through a 
cheerful region they came to the palace which 
was promised. The grounds delighted Hester 
with such evergreens as she had never seen or 
hoped to see. 

“ If only you could see this place in the end of 
May,” said Fanny Southard. 

“ I am very well satisfied as it is,” said Hester. 

“ I never was in such grandeur in my life,” said 


OF A PULLMAN. 


39 


Flester when the day was done. “Yet I believe 
we were all born to such beautiful things ; and I 
am sure I was more at ease than I am when Efifie 
has made me climb up into her attic in the top of 
No. 99 Oswego street.” For all this, I think 
Hester’s wonder at the palace was, first and last, 
that the hall of the house was so comfortable as 
well as so fine. It is long, long ago that the 
entry of a New England house ceased to be 
comfortable. People make them smaller and 
smaller. They let the boys leave their dirty 
boots there. The stairs are ugly. People even 
fail to warm the “entry.” At last it has not a 
chair, a sofa, or a picture. It is nothing but an 
“ entry,” a place to come in by and to go out by ; 
and you are glad to be done with it. 

But here was indeed a hall, — beautiful beyond 
any room Hester had ever seen, — adorned with 
curious and precious works of art, such as she 
could not bear to pass by, and, withal, the cordial 
welcome of the most courteous of hosts, who had, 
it seemed, stayed at home because his friend 
Southard was going to bring some friends. He 
excused his wife, whom the ladies would see 
afterwards. His courtesies were perfect ; and in 
the glories of the palace Effie and Hester were at 
once at ease. Fanny Southard was all delight 


40 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


She knew especially, how Effie would enjoy the 
marvels of modern painting with which that 
house is filled — as perhaps no other house in 
America is. How often had she said, “ If only 
Effie could go there.” And now Effie was here. 

When the ladies had laid off their furs and 
wraps their host led them into a beautiful draw- 
ing-room, which is in fact a picture-gallery. Be- 
fore they sat down, or before Effie could cross to 
see what stood on an easel, he asked leave to 
present two friends who had called just before. 
These gentlemen were standing. 

“ Let me present Mr. Brinkerhoff and Mr. Hay- 
dock ! ” 

The girls looked up and gave their hands 
frankly, with smile and laughter. 

“ Why, you are old friends ? ” asked their host. 

“ We have travelled several hundred miles 
together.” 

Then there was a little explanation ; and in 
groups, or in couples, as accident, fancy, or cour- 
tesy suggested, they turned to what, for many, 
many days, must be the dominant temptation to 
any one visiting in that beautiful house — the 
study of its beautiful pictures. 

“You are an artist,” said Hiram Brinkerhoff to 
Mrs. Abgar, as she stood silently before a picture 
of Rousseau’s. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


41 


When I see what these men have done, I do 
not dare to say so. But there are artists of all 
grades. Yes, I am an artist.” 

“ And you believe in these Frenchmen } ” 

Effie roused herself to a great struggle. Here 
was one more man who supposed that the French 
school of to-day is a horde of Bohemians eager to 
paint naked women ; and she must pretend to 
talk with this man about things of which he knew 
nothing. Ah ! well. The truth is the truth, and 
Effie steeled herself to misery even in these ex- 
quisite surroundings. 

“ I believe in such work as this. I believe in 
such a picture as that” — and she pointed to a 
country scene by Millet, while for very sympathy 
her eyes were brimming over. “ I believe in such 
landscape as that of Dupre’s. I should think any- 
body might believe in a picture like that gleaner,” 
and she pointed to one of Jules Breton’s paintings. 
Then, as she looked almost indignant into his 
face, she saw how entirely she had his sympathy 
— that she need not have strained herself up to 
conflict — and she fairly apologized for her zeal. 

“ I think I know your feeling,” said he. “ My 
question was absurd. People talk now of French 
artists exactly as the English talk of American 
dialect, as if I spoke Texan, or could ; or as if a 
Carolinian could speak Yankee.” 


42 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


“ Do not let us remember them,” said Effie, 
hastily ; “only let us enjoy while we can. They 
will want to take us out of this room before I am 
in the least ready to go.” 

Ah, me ! That is the difficulty in this palace, 
even with all the courtesy of its host. It is not a 
place for one day’s visit, and, whichever room you 
are in, you cannot bear to go from it to the 
next. 

“ Talk of palaces,” said Mr. Brinkerhoff to Effie, 
when he found she had never been in Europe, 
“ they drag you to many and many a palace there, 
bigger than this, and with acres of pictures on 
the walls. But if you will trust my little experi- 
ence, you will say that there are very few houses 
in this world, call them what you please, where is 
so much that you are glad to see, while you are 
not fretted with annoyances — where there is 
really nothing to be explained away.” 

Their host had at this moment taken Hester 
into another room, and they could speak aloud 
of him. 

“You see,” said Brinkerhoff, “that he has 
bought what he liked, and he has not bought 
what he did not like. I should be amused to see 
one of the professed picture dealers of Paris, or of 
Munich, or of Antwerp, try to sell him a picture 


OF A PULLMAN. 


43 


that he did not choose to buy. It is not a gallery 
made to please other people, I should say, but to 
please him who bought it.” 

But Effie was not listening. In a minute she 
roused enough to know that he had been talking. 

“ I beg your pardon. But stand where I stand, 
and look.” 

It was Couture’s picture of a boy blowing bub- 
bles, when, perhaps — who shall say.? — he should 
have been learning his lesson. Should he .? Then 
we should have had no picture. He is not a 
thoughtless, lazy boy. He has a delicate, pensive 
face — more a girl’s than a boy’s ; he wears a dark 
dress and leans his head back on his chair as he 
watches the bubble. His slate is lying on his 
knees, and beyond is a table with school-books. 
‘‘ Tell me that that picture will not be precious as 
long as there are boys and bubbles, mothers and 
sisters and slates and pencils ! Who cares for 
schools of artists, and all the stuff they write in 
the papers about motives and tones and earnest- 
ness and fiddlesticks — when there are pictures 
like that — and that — and that — and that.?” 
And as she spoke, she turned on her feet, and 
faced successively every side of the room. 

A happy, happy morning was it. Marvel upon 
marvel in the house. How Hester’s eyes opened 


44 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


when they came to rest in the library. The first 
folio Shakespeare, had she not seen that } The 
earliest Milton — was she curious about early 

books — or would she not like and so on, 

and so on. Where would she ever stop, if she 
began to look at these wonders ? And then, the 
whole room, in the midst of what she knew were 
almost priceless treasures, was so comfortable, 
the fire so cheerful, and all the chances for work 
so convenient ! 

And then there must be a little lunch ; and 
then they must go to the other library, which, 
strange to say, was over the stable — only the 
stable was a palace in its way — and wonders 
never ceased till they bade their kind host 
good-by. 

They had to bid Hiram and Fred good-by also. 
But it may well be guessed that after a day like 
that, they could hardly believe that they had been 
strangers only sixty hours before. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


45 


CHAPTER V. 

tN the afternoon of the next day F'rederic Hay- 
dock was sitting, smoking, in the pilot-house 
of the “ General Lytle ” as she lay at the shore 
at Cincinnati taking on freight for Louisville. 
The proceedings on shore were entertaining — • 
many of them new to him — and his position, 
screened from the wind by the glass wall of the 
pilot-house, was not uncomfortable. 

His companion joined him, pausing a minute 
on the step-ladder which leads to the pilot-house 
from the roof of the Texas. 

The Texas is the third story, so to speak, of a 
river boat, the story in which the officers live. 
Ordinary passengers have nothing to do with it 
but to mount to its top, over which they walk to 
the pilot-house. 

To travellers to whom all is new, the pilot- 
house is on many accounts the pleasantest part 
of the boat while they are taking observations. 

“ It is nothing,” said Hiram Brinkerhoff, as he 


46 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


entered. “ But I am never tired of studying the 
movements of these river crafts and their crews.” 

“ They are so unlike the rest of the world that 
they have a separate column in the newspapers 
for their bon-mots and other small talk.” 

“You know Mark Twain won his name here. 
* Mark twain ! ’ is one of the cries of a man 
sounding, as he reports to the pilot. If all river 
men were as funny as he is, it would be worth 
while to give them a column.” 

“ It is much more entertaining now than the 
Court Circular is, though not in quite such 
stately English. But it always reminds me of 
the Court Circular, seeing these people are our 
sovereigns for the time.” 

“ For that matter you might say that the chil- 
dren are sovereigns. I see that they have a 
column in these newspapers, too.” 

“ Yes. Have you studied to-day’s .? ” And he 
read from that day’s daily this specimen from 
the “ Children’s Column : ” 

“ Dear Sir, — My duck has seven eggs, and I hope 
she will have four more. I read your paper every 
day, and like it much. I am eleven years and four 
months old and vote for Hayes. Truly yours, Abra- 
ham Lincoln Watts, South Utopia^ Ohio.” 

“ Who is Hayes } I see he is the ‘ favorite 
son ’ here.” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


47 


“Yes, of that there is no doubt. He is the 
same man that beat Allen on the hard money 
question last year. Evidently a strong man. 
Did not you hear what that Mr. Southard said 
of him } ” 

“At the picture gallery.? Your inamorata’s 
friend ? " 

“ I thought,” said Hiram, laughing, “ that the 
other was my inamorata. Or have you given 
that up since she proved to be a married woman .? 
Yes, that is the man. Evidently a man of mark 
here, leading counsel and all that. We were 
speaking of the Ohio State Convention, and of 
its nomination of Hayes, and I said, rather too 
flippantly as it proved, that ‘ favorite sons ’ seemed 
to be coming to the front. This gentleman re- 
plied very earnestly that the country would be 
fortunate if it had any man of half Governor 
Hayes’s worth at its head. He has certainly 
made a mark here. Surely you remember his 
canvass for governor.” 

“ My dear fellow,” said Haydock, “ of course I 
do. But when you have lived in St. Auguste 
eleven years, as I hope you may ; when you have 
tried to keep the peace between two thousand 
crazy and ignorant field hands and two hundred 
crazy and irritated Acadian F. '^nchmen, you will 


48 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


find that all your interest in questions of green- 
backs, even of tariffs, even of sutlerships, is much 
less than your interest about some of the very 
fundamentals of government. Why, Hiram, in 
that little parish there have been seventy mur- 
ders in ten years ! ” 

But here politics were cut off as the engine 
screamed its last call to the loiterers, the bell 
rang convulsively, the orange-women, the banana- 
men, the candy-girls, the newsboys were tumbled 
on shore, a “ gentlemanly clerk,” with his hands 
full of papers, left last of all, and then an ener- 
getic, anxious, long-suffering mate exhorted a 
horde of laughing, careless, limp negroes, tum- 
bling over each other’s heels, to be lively and 
not to go to sleep as they hauled up from the 
strand that mysterious landing-plank which 
seems like an elephant’s trunk, and the boat 
wriggled out from her berth into the current of 
the Ohio. 

And so they swept down the river. The 
“ General Lytle ” got under full headway, and 
the young men sat till the supper-bell rang, 
watching the disappearance of the smoky city 
and the waning light of the sunset, made perhaps 
even more glorious by the smoke. A waiter 
came up to summon them to tea, and Haydock 


OF A PULLMAN, 


49 


threw away his cigar. Both of them vanished 
into their staterooms for a minute’s toilette, and 
when they were led to their table by the steward 
in attendance they found their chairs tipped for- 
ward, one opposite and one next to Hester 
Sutphen ! 

Mrs. Abgar sat at the end of the table next to 
her friend. 

Both gentlemen, with equal spirit, expressed 
their satisfaction with their good luck, and had, 
of course, no lack of subjects in going back over 
the experiences of the “ Golconda,” the palace on 
wheels, and of that other beautiful palace not on 
wheels, which they had seen in each other’s com- 
pany. Of course it soon appeared that the 
ladies had never crossed the Alleghanies before, 
and were wholly ignorant of the ways and 
means, the etiquettes, luxuries, and discomforts 
of a Western steamboat. 

One of them cited the expression which she 
had heard a day or two before — “A palace 
above and a warehouse below.” 

“ Then this is our third Palace since we 
started ” said Hiram, laughing. “ That is doing 
well for Republicans in one week.” 

As of course we all live at home in log cab- 
ins or in the attics of tenement houses,” said 


4 


50 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Hester, “ we must be grateful for this infusion of 
palatial experience. Do they really burn kero- 
sene in kings’ houses, Mr. Brinkerhoff 1 ” 

Then the incautious school-mistress was pro- 
voked with herself that she had let Mr. Brinker- 
hoff know that Effie Abgar had told her what 
he had said in the picture-gallery. In fact each 
one of the four persons marked this point 
silently. 

“ As to that, I think they would be glad to. 
To tell the whole truth, the kings and emperors 
never asked me much to their evening parties. 
But I am afraid they are still under the delusion 
of wax candles.” 

“You remember one Palace that was lighted 
with petroleum ? ” said Efifie. 

Hiram laughed, and quoted : 

“ Many a row 

Of starry lamps and blazing cressets, fed 
With naphtha and asphaltus, yielded light 
As from a sky.” 

“Yes, indeed; but, somehow, I have always 
imagined it rather smoky down there, have not 
you ? ” 

“ That was in Pandemonium, was it not } 
That was before General Rosecranz taught 
people how to tame the naphtha.” 


OF A PULLMAN, 


51 


^‘Was it he?” 

I believe it was he.” 

“ I really think,” said Effie, “ that Mulciber or 
Baal, or some of them, ought to have known that 
before General Rosecranz came.” 

“ The children of this world proved to be chil- 
dren of light that time,” said Hester. “ Anyway, 
this makes a brilliant supper-room for us.” 

And it will be a brilliant drawing-room, and, 
if there is a fiddle on board, it will be a brilliant 
ball-room by and by ; and if you are far-sighted, 
Miss Sutphen, you can see in the distant per- 
spective that the preparations are going forward 
at the other end for euchre, so that it will be a 
card-room also.” 

“ The truth is,” said Frederic Haydock, “ it is 
more like a baron’s hall than it is like a modern 
palace. At the stern here the women reign su- 
preme. Yonder, indeed, in the saloon, or what- 
ever they call it, I may not enter, unless one of 
these ladies bid me. Then comes the piano. 
Then, where you see the captain, is the real head 
of the tables, and the head of the feast. By 
special privilege, because Mr. Brinkerhoff has 
every thing of the best always, and is a favorite 
with the ‘ gentlemanly clerk,’ we are permitted 
to sit at this table with ladies. See, lower down 


52 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


beyond the middle distance, if you will permit 
me, Mrs. Abgar — see tables unenlightened and 
not favored, where sit only men.” 

“ They are ‘ below the salt,’ ” said she, taking 
up his figure. 

“ In a sense, yes. But it is the land of equal- 
ity, and they are fed quite as well as we are.” 

“ Do you really mean,” said she, “ that there 
will be dancing by and by ? ” 

“That depends. If those people yonder, at 
the captain’s table, are two young men who have 
just married those two young women, and if 
those others are the bridesmaids and grooms- 
men, we shall certainly have dancing. If, on the 
other hand, they are delegates from the United 
Sandemanian Conference of Louisville to the 
United Sandemanian Conference of Cincinnati, 
we shall have psalmody. If, perhaps, they are 
the ' Grand Double Quartette of the Western 
Reserve,’ or the ‘ Pittsburgian Choral Union,’ on 
their way for what the newspapers call ‘ a musi- 
cal campaign,’ why that tall lady with black curls 
will be archly singing, 

‘ If a body kiss a body going through the rye,’ 
before we are an hour older.” 

“ Let us hope,” said Hester, gravely, “that the 
next song may be the ‘ Blue Juniata,’ by the dis- 


OF A PULLMAN. 


53 


tinguished primo tenore assoluto from the Grand 
Opera.” 

For Hester and Eflfie did not yet know which 
of the two gentlemen sang so wonderfully well. 
And so they did not know which of them was 
so dead in love with that unknown Amy, and 
yet they were “ bound to know.” But whether 
Hiram Brinkerhoff did not understand or did 
not care, or whether he would not understand 
or would not care, or whether Frederic Haydock 
were equally indifferent or equally skilful, neither 
of them colored or looked at the other. Only 
Hiram said, “ Our chances are rather in Coro- 
nation and Peterborough, I fancy. But you 
ladies found out, long ago, what manner of 
people those were.” 

The description which Haydock had given of 
the various purposes to which sooner or later 
this long saloon would be devoted was no ex- 
aggeration. It looks more like a perspective 
view of the Thames Tunnel than any picture 
well known to most readers. After supper, at 
the suggestion of the gentlemen, the whole 
party walked quite forward to the other end 
of the hall. Persons sitting there had seemed 
dim and hazy even to Effie’s far sight when 
they stood at the piano. They found, when they 


54 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


came there that on the right and left, in their 
little offices, were the clerk and captain and 
other managers; and the persons sitting round 
the stove there were, clearly enough, men on 
business errands, without children or ladies, 
who gravitated to this end as the family parties 
gravitated to the other. They made room for 
the ladies to pass, and then Hiram flung open a 
door that they might look out on the night, look 
down on the piled up stores of the “ warehouse 
below,” and might see the picturesque groups of 
the deck hands. 

At other times in such scenes, Effie caught 
every opportunity she could, by the strong lights 
of the pine-knots at night or under the effects 
less sharp of day, to preserve in her sketch-book 
or on handy little bits of cigar box memorials of 
the attitudes or occupations of these men. 

The walking and talking were suddenly inter- 
rupted. Quite without notice, a strange drum- 
ming was heard behind them, and a smiling and 
beaming negro at that moment touched Hester 
and said, — 

“ Please, mum, the Indians is dancing ! ” 

“ The what ! ” cried Haydock, not wholly 
pleased with the interruption. 

Then it appeared that on board the boat was a 


OF A PULLMAN. 


55 


delegation of Chippewayor Ojibwa Indians, who 
were on a journey somewhere, after having 
visited Washington. It had been thought fit 
that they should follow the Father of Waters to 
the sea, — and so they were all on board the 
“ Lytle.” Dr. Summerfield, a minister on board, 
had prevailed on the agent and interpreter to 
bring them aft in the evening to give an exhibi- 
tion of their singing and dancing in the saloon, 
and it was their drum which had interrupted 
Hester. 

With Mr. Haydock, she followed the waiter 
back into the cabin. 

The serious red-men were leaping gravely 
round one of their number, while yet others used 
the drum, and she-she-gwuns, or rattles. 

Dr. Summerfield explained that this was a very 
grave and serious dance of mystery. It was in 
fact a sort of Eleusinian mystery, and would 
never have been performed in this assembly but 
that Dr. Summerfield was known as a religious 
man and the devoted friend of their race. 

Hester and Fred came back just in time to 
hear, — 


S6 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 



I. Na ha^ — Tau ne; 

Na ha^ — Tau ne; 

Ning o saw pau wabeno. 


The dance proved interminably long, and the 
verses which Effie wrote down, are only taken at 
random from thirty or forty. 



2. Hi au ha 
Ge he he 
He ge ge 
Hi au he 
Hi au ge 

We gau bo we aun. 



3. A ne kuva 
Gi be aun 


Ge zhick — O wun. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


57 


4. Ke we tau — ge zhick 
Ka te kwa 
We teem aun. 


The words printed in italics above, as the in- 
terpreter explained to her, are mere ejaculations, 
the same in English as in Chippeway. 

The other words mean simply, — 

1. “I am a friend of the Wabeno ; ” that is, I 
am in sympathy with this rite, and acknowledge my 
allegiance to the Wabeno who conducts it. 

2. Here the Great Spirit himself, embodied in a 
tree, says “ I (the tree) sound for my life as I 
stand.” 

3. The Worshipper says : “All round the circle of 
the sky, I hear the Spirit’s voice.” 

4. The Great Spirit himself, as God of Thunder, 
says : “ I sound all round the sky that they can hear 
me.” 

Effie asked the interpreter if he could not give 
to her the music. But he shrugged his shoulders, 
and, at the piano, intimated that if she would 
slowly and gravely thrum on any two keys which 
were not in absolute discord, with but the 



58 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


slightest remembrance of the time of the dance, 
her tune would be as good as theirs. But he 
wrote or drew for her, on the open page of her 
ready sketch-book, the pictorial representation of 
the words, which has been copied, with each 
verse, above. 

The first is a necromancer’s hand, in a sup- 
plicating posture, holding a bone, which is a 
charm or amulet. 

The second is a symbol of the tree. 

The third is the celestial hemisphere or sky, 
with the face of the Great Spirit looking over it. 
Within is a Manito’s arm in supplication. On 
the right is a bird of good omen. 

The fourth represents the beams of the 
Great Spirit all around the sky. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


59 


CHAPTER VI. 

TT 7HEN the girls woke in the morning each 
^ ^ of them had the same start of surprise ; 
for each wondered how things could be so still, 
and how she could have been sleeping so solidly. 
The slight tremor of the boat was hushed, and 
not even in her bed at home could either of 
them have enjoyed sleep less mixed with dreams 
than in this morning nap. In the earlier part of 
the night things had not seemed so smooth. 

They were, in truth, now at Louisville ; most 
of the passengers had landed, and the boat on 
their side was undisturbed by noise. When 
they were equipped to the last button, strap and 
keyhole, they did what Oriana or Darioleta would 
have called “essaying the adventure” of an 
interview with the clerk, to know how they 
should land their luggage and how they should 
find a cab or a coach. 

They began together their walk down the long 
saloon. But, of course — as at the bottom of 


6o 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


her heart each one had hoped, though neither 
had yet said so — before they had performed 
one-half of the ^‘trivial dance” before them, 
Hiram Brinkerhoff and Frederic Haydock were 
seen approaching from the other end to meet 
them. If the ladies chose, they could suppose 
that the gentlemen had deferred their own land- 
ing until they could say good-by. If they did 
not choose they need not think so. 

Anyway, the landing was featly and easily ac- 
complished. Hester began by giving her pretty 
fur purse to Hiram that he might rightly fee the 
porters. And when both ladies were in the car- 
riage, and he gave it back to her, he said, — 

“ I have paid for every thing. How long are 
you to remain here } ” 

“ I wish I knew. Perhaps a day — perhaps 
a fortnight.” 

“ I hope we may call,” said Frederic. 

“ Certainly,” said Effie Abgar. “ Certainly,” 
said Hester. “ Good-by ! Good-by ! ” And the 
carriage rolled away. 

“ It was really a piece of great good luck that 
we met them,” said Efhe. “ They are thorough 
gentlemen, if they are drummers.” 

“ They are not drummers ! ” cried Hester, 
really sharply — the first sharp words, however, 
which she had spoken on the journey. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


6 


Effie would not notice the tone. She only 
laughed and said, Oh ! I am really relieved. 
Not that I know what a drummer is. I only 
took the impression from something you dropped. 
But it is much nicer to have them fifers.” 

And by this time the storm was over, and 
they both laughed an'd rolled round in the car- 
riage enough to kiss each other. 

Louisville is a charming city, and charming 
people live there. And to young folks like these, 
fleeing from snow and ice and winter, it was 
pleasant to be greeted by spring violets and even 
Claytonias, and to see magnolia trees and grass 
that was fairly green. Of course they were told 
that the spring was exceptionally late and ex- 
ceptionally cold. What spring, ever, was not ex- 
ceptionally late and exceptionally cold ? And 
they were very glad to find a good coke fire that 
cold morning at Mr. Sebastian’s house. And 
the welcome, when the ladies came running 
down to meet them, was delicious. And this 
time Effie could administer of the sweets of hos- 
pitality to Hester. For the Sebastians were her 
friends ; or, rather, they had been old friends of 
Mr. Abgar’s. She had never seen them before, 
but, as Hester said to her when they were alone 
in their own room, it was as if they had known 
her all their lives. 


62 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


So there was every sort of expedition ar- 
ranged ; every kind of pretty party — school- 
friends who turned up but had not forgotten — 
and, just as it had been at Cincinnati, the girls 
were made to feel that they had been idiots that 
they had not arranged to spend the whole month 
at Louisville. But, unexpectedly, on the second 
day only, came a letter which showed that if 
they meant to take the best boat at Memphis, 
and to take the chance of joining the party of 
Governor Champernoon and his family, they must 
not loiter long. After a very short visit, there- 
fore, ten in the evening saw them bidding good- 
by to the Sebastians, and to quite a little circle of 
the Sebastians’ friends, who seemed to Hettie 
and to Elbe to be people they had known ever 
since they wore short frocks ; though in fact 
they had never seen them before the “ Gen. 
Lytle” stopped at Louisville that Friday morn- 
ing. Lunches unnumbered little baskets of 
Florida oranges ; curious arrangements of co- 
logne, — I know not what ingenious contrivances 
for Palace life — were forced upon them as they 
kissed good-by, and cried good-by, and shook 
hands good-by, and told good-by, and said good- 
by. Then the omnibus driver cried “ All ready,” 
and they plunged into the darkness and drove. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


63 


through ways they had not known, to the distant 
station. 

Mr. Edgar Sebastian made all easy there. 
*‘You had better take the berths at once,” he 
said. “ I ordered them this morning.” And 
then to the porter, “ Ready with your lantern, 
boy ; what section has Mrs. Abgar } ” 

The porter looked, and said, “ The ladies have 
number six.” 

“ My dear,” said Effie, “ you shall have ‘ lower 
six. ’ ” 

“ My dear Effie,” said Hester, who was in 
advance in the darkness, and had come to the 
Palace, “it is our dear Golconda.” 

“ It is the Golconda,” cried Effie, as she 
mounted. And the well-pleased porter, glad 
that everybody else was glad, said, “ Yes, ma’am. 
She had a hot box yesterday — was took off to 
cool, ma’am, and the ‘ Sybaris ’ took her place, 
ma’am. Glad you’s pleased, ma’am. Six is all 
made up, ma’am.” And then to Mr. Sebastian, 
“ Will the ladies retire now } ” 

Yes — the ladies would retire. They bade 
Mr. Edgar good-by, and did retire. They had 
slept an hour quietly before the express came 
thundering in from Cincinnati, and it hardly 
waked them ; and Effie’s second night in a 


64 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Palace and Hester’s third were such improve- 
ments on the uneasy rest of those not used to 
wearing crowns, that they swept through Ken- 
tucky all ignorant of Kentucky, and, by the time 
they had found their feet and their eyes in the 
morning, the train was running slow as they 
crossed the Cumberland River, in Tennessee. 

“ I owned to ignorance of Coshocton,” said 
Hester, “ but I had heard of the Cumberland 
River.” 

“ So had I, who am no school-ma’am,” said 
P^ffie. She did not say that as she and Hiram 
Brinkerhoff walked the deck on the “ General 
Lytle,” he had told her more than one story 
of his campaigning with the Army of the Cum- 
berland. Why did not she } Because Hester 
had points enough for jokes already, and she did 
not choose to have Hiram Brinkerhoff called 
“the General.” Besides, who knew.? “Eight” 
and “ ten ” had their curtains drawn still, and so 
had half the sections on the other side. For all 
Euphemia Abgar knew, Mr. Brinkerhoff might 
be behind one of those screens of worsted 
damask next them. 

So she only said “ I am no school-ma’am.” 
And then, when their toilet was made, they began 
watching with eager curiosity the peculiarities of 


OF A PULLMAN. 


65 


Southern life and of a Western forest, all wholly 
new to them. The open air aspect of every way 
station ; the wholly new forms which loafing as- 
sumes in any strange region ; the infinite variety 
and picturesqueness of the little darkies and of 
the big ones ; the extravagant intricacy of the 
rags they wore ; the queerness of the mules ; the 
architecture of every thing, from a corn-barn up 
to a plantation house ; then those strange one- 
rail fences to which horses were tied ; and the 
multitude of saddle horses in every village, where 
at the North would have been wagons ; it was 
all a curiosity. “ Look here, do see this ! ” this 
was the chorus, and Effie’s sketch book and 
pencil were in busy use, while Hester was pro- 
voked at the insufficiency of railroad botanizing. 
Would they never stop long enough for her to 
gather a handful of specimens ! 

The skilful novel-reader has foreseen that as, 
gradually, one and another pair of the damask 
curtains were pulled back, and one and another 
passenger swung himself out into the passage, 
with his coat on or without according as he were 
short or tall, one at least, perhaps both of the 
gentlemen who left New York in the “ Golconda ” 
appeared before the ladies who were their com- 
panions to Cincinnati. In this foresight, or shall 
5 


66 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


we say in this conjecture, the skilful reader is en- 
tirely wrong. How can this writer say whether 
Mrs. Abgar or Miss Sutphen, as they saw the cata- 
comb of the night gradually assume the aspect of 
a drawing-room by day, had any curious ques- 
tion whether they might recognize their travelling 
companions } Two German women with a little 
child, two Jews, an old man who seemed very 
sick, with a poor, pale wife taking care of him, 
and one or two very insignificant men, very tall 
and very thin, who might have been going to 
Memphis and St. Louis to buy or sell mules, or 
might have been agents of Brigham Young re- 
turning to report progress, but who carried no 
sign of what they were ; these were the most of 
the passengers: — but an indifferent looking 
party, not encouraging to the student of romance. 
When “Fourteen" at last gave up its dead, the 
porter flew at the curtains and “ redded " it with 
glad promptness, and then all parties felt that 
day had at last begun. The day was delightful. 
They could open their windows. And, without, 
the earlier trees and the first flowers gave token 
of spring. 

“ We are more than half way to San Antonio," 
said Hester, who had been ciphering and meas- 
uring over her Guide, “and I have not read 


OF A PULLMAN. 


67 


three chapters in the ‘ Strange Adventures of a 
Phaeton.’ ” She took out from her bag that 
charming novel. 

“ Lucky for me,” said Effie. “ The minute you 
are well in, I may occupy myself till you are 
done.” 

“ What a compliment ! that William Black and 
my dearest friend should be balanced against each 
other, and that my dearest Effie should be the 
least bit jealous of William. I will not read one 
word of the ‘ Phaeton ’ till I see you deep in 
Racine.” 

For Effie had bought in Louisville a little sec- 
ond-hand copy of Racine’s plays, which some 
school-girl who had “ finished her education ” had 
sold at a book shop for money with which to buy 
a quarter-pound of caramels. 

“ Poor dear Racine ! To think of matching him 
against William Black. I will read you a little 
without opening the book.” 

So she repeated in the genuine French tragedy 
swing : 

“ Indeed — my dear girl — we shall come — to the river, 

I know — that we go — for I feel — the floor quiver ! 
The man — by my side — has come in with a broom — 

I must take — up my shawl — and must give him more 
room. 

Hettie laughed. “Very well for a beginner. 


68 


WONDERFUL AD VENTURES 


But I — have I not heard the classes read Berenice 
or Athalie ? I can give it to you with the epi- 
grams. You should have an epigram at every 
second line. No great matter what they mean. 
How is this ? 

“The boy — who sells nuts — and is making that noise, 

F orgets — oh, good heaven — that the nuts may sell boys ! 
Oh, my soul — is the word — of the angels above 
That the angels below do not smile on his love ! ” 

They both laughed, as people free from a win- 
ter’s work will laugh at sheer nonsense in the 
exquisite freedom of a palace car. It shares with 
a steamship the luxury of having no door-bell 
and no postman. But in the steamship you are 
sea-sick all the time if you have any brains. In 
the palace car, unless you have been fool enough 
to travel on the short curves of the Baltimore and 
Ohio road, your brains are your own, and your 
stomach’s lord sits lightly on his throne. It is the 
one place known to modern civilization where an 
honest man can be free from bores. A dishonest 
man earns the same privilege in the house of cor- 
rection or the State prison. 

“ Hush ! hush ! ” whispered Effie, as Hester ran 
on with her nonsense. And indeed the whole car 
was hushed, to listen to the weird strain with 
which a little German woman sang her baby to 
sleep. She had come into the Palace at Paris : 


OF A PULLMAN. 


69 


“ Uf’m Berge da geht der Wind, 

Da wiegt die Maria ihr Kind. 

Mit ihrer schlohengelweissen Hand ; 

Sie hat ’dazu auch kein Wiegenband. 

‘ Ach! Joseph, lieber Joseph mein, 

Ach ! hilf mir wiegen mein Knabelein ! ’ 

‘Wie kann ich dir denn dein Knablein wieg’n? 
Ich kann ja kaum selber die Finger bieg’n.’ 
‘Schum, schei, schum, schei.’ ” 





h# ^ a m 



=q — 










The girls listened with pleasure — everybody 
listened with pleasure. “ Go on with your old 


70 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES, 


novel,” said Effie, “ I will go and help her put her 
child to sleep.” 

And so she did ; and then she had a long talk 
with the mother. And when she came back, an 
hour after, and Hester was willing to look up from 
the “ Phaeton,” Effie showed her this little version 
of the song 

“ Over the hills the tempests sweep, 

Mary rocks her boy to sleep ; 

She rocks him with her snow-white hand, 
Because she has no cradle-band. 

‘ Dear Joseph, Joseph, pray come here. 

And help me rock my baby dear.’ 

‘ And how can I your little baby tend .? 

For you see I cannot my fingers bend.’ 

‘ Schum, schei, schum, schei.’ ” 

Hester hummed it, and Effie hummed it. “ I 
think ‘ schum, schei,’ is excellently translated.” 

« So do I.” 

What is a cradle-band ? ” 

“Just what she could not tell me.” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


71 


CHAPTER VIL 

“ I RATHER of Waters, indeed,” said Hester, 
as they came to the Mississippi before 
they expected. It was not yet four o’clock, when 
the train was due at Memphis ; but here were 
already waters “ to right of them,” waters “ to 
left of them.” How if the river should be in 
front of them also 

The truth was that the Father of Waters was 
on a rampage. He had come to meet them. It 
proved afterwards that he had never rampaged 
more boldly. And here were coves where had 
not often been coves — daughters or sons of his 
they were, according to Efhe. People were go- 
ing in tubs, on planks, and in canoes, from one 
cabin to another. Carts were standing up to the 
hubs of the wheels in water. All things brought 
back to Mrs. Abgar the delights of a freshet in 
her childhood ; when, to say truth, she was cap- 
tain of the fleet and led out the adventurous 
girls of Northampton upon the prohibited but 


72 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


too delightful excursions which they took upon 
boards or cellar doors. 

Memphis itself, however, was not under water. 
Memphis is a city founded by General Jackson 
and two friends. At one time he owned half of 
the original town plot. President’s Island still 
preserves his memory. 

“ If there are no pyramids yet, there are as 
good inundations as on the Nile,” said Hester, 
as they adjusted themselves in a very long om- 
nibus, which was to take them to the Peabody 
House. 

“You will see a very interesting mound, 
madam, if you are curious in antiquities,” said 
Dr. Summerfield their gray-haired friend, — so 
evidently a doctor of divinity and agent of the 
Southern Branch Publication Board of the 
United Presbyterian Church of the eleventh 
secession, that there could be no impropriety in 
his again addressing a traveller. Mrs. Abgar 
thanked him — and then, as before, he very 
kindly helped her in her curiosity about the 
Indians. 

And at the Peabody House their hotel life 
with its intricacies and its solaces, began. For- 
lorn enough to retire from breakfast to a ghastly 
ladies’ parlor, with horribly elegant mirrors in 


OF A PULLMAN. 


73 


tarnished or burnished frames, with never a book 
except a directory from the town — or, by the 
kindness of the Bible Society, a Bible ! But, on 
the contrary, a certain satisfaction, be it con- 
fessed, in the chances for silence if one wished to 
be silent ; and for naps if one wished to nap 
unhelped and uncriticised. Of this indepen- 
dence be it observed, however, the charm was 
gone, for both these ladies, in about six hours 
after they had tried it. 

The people in the house were as thoughtful 
and civil as if the travellers had been princesses. 
“ See what it is,” said Hester proudly, “ to 
travel without escort.” The “ Chester Boone ” 
might be there the next day at noon — probably 
not till night — nor must the ladies be surprised 
if she did not come in till morning of the next 
day. This was the report- of the hotel clerk to 
them. Meanwhile would the ladies have a car- 
riage } Or if they preferred to walk, the sunset 
from the bluff was a fine sight, and they would 
see the boats go off. 

Hester thanked him, and when he was gone, 
explained to Effie that this meant that they were 
booked to stay in Memphis for eight-and-forty 
hours at least — that river boats never came as 
early as they said they should. “So now you 


74 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


may get out your colors, dear — you may paint 
my portrait, or that dear old black wash-woman’s, 
or you may write a treatise on the antediluvian 
history of Tennessee.” 

In fact, the ladies wholly unpacked, took pos- 
session of the drawers of their bureaux, got out 
their books upon the tables, pinned up some of 
Effie’s sketches on the doors, and gave their 
room a very habitable air. 

They did take the sunset walk on the bluff. 
And for the first time they understood, or began 
to understand, what is the grandeur of the Mis- 
sissippi. The western sky was all a blaze of 
crimson and gold. Low down — insignificant in 
every sense in comparison with those piles of 
gorgeous color above and with the rolling ocean 
below it — was the strip of western forest, all 
percolated with the risen flood, which makes 
what is called the western bank of the river. 
As if this river knew of banks or bars ! That 
thread of woods — for it did not seem like a thread 
of land — was as nothing when measured against 
the piles of cloud above and the world of waters 
below. The girls themselves stood high above 
the flood, though the flood was higher, men said, 
than it had ever been before. What a flood ! 
How angry ! How sullen ! How resistless ! 


OF A PULLMAN. 


75 


If a man fall in from one of the boats,” said the 
Doctor of Divinity, who had joined them, “ even his 
body is never found.” Great tangles of floating 
trees were whirling round and round. Glassy 
patches, which seemed perfectly smooth, were 
bordered by ripples and even strips of rough 
waves, the glass reflecting the gold of the sunset 
or the blue of the upper sky, and the waves 
black and angry. 

“ Power — and wrath — and indifference ! ” 
said Effie. 

“ I never saw it before but at Niagara,” said 
Hester, shuddering. “Father of Waters, in- 
deed ! ” 

What Mr. Alger calls the element of “ human 
pathos” was not wanting in the majestic scene 
around the girls, and below them as they stood 
on the water-channelled bluff were thousands of 
people coming, going, or, like themselves, rest- 
ing and looking on. How insignificant they all 
seemed in comparison with the flood ! Was this 
perhaps a daily promenade of Memphis } Or 
was this an exceptional day ? The ladies did 
not know. There was a circus in full blast on 
one side ; below, on one of the steamboats, was 
a band of music. In the river — on their side of 
the river — forging through all the whirl and 


76 


WONDERFUL AD VENTURES 


rush and eddy were little spiteful tugs dashing 
hither and thither, dragging great oblong barges 
of coal. Giant steamboats beginning to cough 
and puff and wheeze, and to give other signs of 
life were receiving their freight and passengers. 
Bells would ring, the band would play more vig- 
orously than ever, drays, carts, and carriages 
would hurry, then the final words of land-lubbers, 
and at last the Elephant lifted his great trunk 
of a landing-plank, and the boat dashed out and 
away to be forgotten, while the wild raging in- 
different river whirled and eddied on as if there 
had been no boat there. The whole was a most 
exciting and eventful scene. 

The next morning, after a late breakfast, Effie 
did take out all her paints, set her palette nicely, 
broke to pieces a nice large cigar-box which the 
porter had found for her, and on its largest side 
had begun to try, “just to try,” she said, some of 
the wonderful memories of the sunset, when 
there was a tap heard at the door. 

“ Come in ! ” 

It was the clerk of the hotel. “ I am sorry to 
tell you, ladies, that if you take the ‘ Chester 
Boone ’ you must leave at once. The water is so 
high that she is much earlier than we expected. 
They send us word that she has rounded the 


OF A PULLMAN. 


77 


point, and that means she is at the landing by 
this time. She takes a little freight here, and 
will be off, they tell me, in half an hour.” 

In half an hour ! These trunks must be 
packed, this palette cleaned, nay, these dresses 
changed and these bills paid in half an hour ! ” 

I have ordered a carriage, madam,” said the 
respectful clerk, “and it will be ready in ten 
minutes.” 

“In ten minutes ! ” screamed Hester as he left 
the room. Effie said nothing, but her brushes 
were already wrapped in paper, to be cleaned on 
board the boat, and the palette was in its tin 
case for travel ! 


78 WONDERFUL AD VENTURES 


CHAPTER VIIL 



ND Effie never once reviled Hester, nor 


^ said, “It was you who said a river-boat is 
always behind time.” 

Ten minutes saw the carriage at the door. 
Ten minutes more saw the girls in the carriage. 
In ten minutes more they were in the “ Chester 
Boone,” had been introduced to her clerk by the 
young man whom the hotel clerk had sent with 
them, and this officer had said to them that they 
would be amused by the view from the pilot- 
house. He had explained, alas ! that the Cham- 
pernoons were not on board, after all ! He had 
escorted them up to the lofty pilot-house, and 
there of course they found — 

Not Frederic Haydock nor Hiram Brinkerhoff, 
but the Doctor of Divinity. 

And he explained to them what they could 
never have known. “ My dear,” said Effie, in a 
half aside, “ Do you see they are beginning the 
pyramids ? Do you see those heaps of square 
stones half way up the bluff } ” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


79 


In fact these solid heaps looked like causeways 
for giants where the giants preferred to have the 
stepping-stones square rather than hexagonal. 
They frowned down upon the waves of the 
freshet. 

“ Those cubical stones, madam,” said the agent 
of the publishing board, “are paving stones. 
When the river goes down, the bank will be 
paved with them.” 

“ Why, have they only just come 'i ” said Effie. 

“ Oh no, indeed ! ” said he, laughing. “ But 
they are too valuable to be swept down by the 
flood. They are taken up before it comes and 
stored there against the dry weather.” 

To this hour Effle does not know whether he 
was chafling her. But he was not. 

Both of them had their sketch-books out. It 
was all so fascinating. They never tired of the 
mules, they were so queer. Every black boy was 
more wildly picturesque, not to say mysterious, 
in his oddity than his predecessor. The “ Chester 
Boone” did not quite keep to her promise of 
“ half an hour,” but in an' hour from the time 
when Effle set her palette the “ Chester Boone ” 
and the travellers were under way. 

And the kind Doctor of Divinity showed the 
ladies their first Indian mound. 


8o 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Ah ! if it were the duty of this writer only to 
make a little romance, in six parts, of the sail 
from Memphis to Helena ! Material enough is 
there, though that romance should be the three 
orthodox volumes of Mr. Murray ! 

» But,” 

as was before said, 

“But wiser Fate says, No.” 

Unwritten be the history of that evening. Un- 
written its songs, its theological conversations, 
its weird torchlight landings, the dance in the 
after cabin, the poker in the cabin before. 

The next morning the ladies met by appoint- 
ment, early, that they might have a walk on the 
forward deck ypstairs before breakfast and see 
the sunrise. The sunrise was, of course, beauti- 
ful, but, as it happened, on this morning it had 
not the grandeur of the sunset. The morning 
was cold enough for them to want to walk briskly, 
and every thing was exciting and interesting. The 
“ Tow-heads,” as the queer tufts at the end of 
the cut-offs are called, the occasional passage of 
the boat through a cut-off, the tints of green be- 
ginning to appear on the shore, and once the salute 
of the “ Montezuma,” as they met her blithely 
working her way up the river — such things, all 
strange, kept them on the lookout. Then the 


OF A PULLMAN. 


8 


profound solitude ! That this giant ship which 
bore them should be forging on through this 
wilderness, where, but that they had seen the 
“ Montezuma,” there was no other sign of man. 
And she, she left only that faint shred of smoke 
on the air to show that she had lived. 

“ That smoke wraith represents history, dear 
Hester.” 

But just as Effie said this there was token of 
man’s being again. A ting on the pilot’s bell 
made them look up to him, and then they climbed 
to his friendly house to ask what manoeuvre was 
in progress. He pointed far, far away, and com- 
pelled them to see a little speck which he said 
was a flag, a signal. So the great boat devoured 
the waters, made nothing of the miles between, 
and, before the ladies could believe it, was near 
enough to the rag or flag for them to see a man 
standing on the little strip of green which the 
pilot said was the levee. Water behind him, 
water before him. He looked like Campbell’s 
last man, or like some Algonkin’s first. It was 
he who had shown the flag. 

The pilot explained that a road ran along the 
top of the levee where the country was not 
flooded, and by this road the man had come. 
In fact, after a few minutes, he pointed out the 
6 


82 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


wagon which the man had left in the bush 
beyond. 

Nearer the boat swept, and nearer. The figure 
of the man, his features, were perfectly plain. 
The boat touched, the gangway was lowered. 
Two black men ran down from the “ Chester 
Boone” and seized the stranger’s wallet and 
saddle-bags. He ran up the plank with them 
and the boat was off. 

It was Frederic Haydock. 

He hurried on board, and before his foot had 
well touched the deck the great gangway rose 
and pointed heavenward again. The pilot’s 
bells struck “ ting ting,” the giant snorted his 
satisfaction, and the “ Chester Boone ” resumed 
her way through what was solitude again, now 
that she had absorbed this little atom of outside 
life. 

Effie waited for an instant, just an instant, for 
Hester to speak first, as she almost always did. 

But Hester did not speak first, and then Effie 
knew that there was such a secret between them 
as there had never been before. And she spoke 
first. 

“ I am so glad he has come,” said she. “ We 
did miss them all day yesterday, for all dear Dr. 
Summerfield.” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


83 


By this time Hester was sure she could speak 
carelessly, and she said, “ Yes, I am very glad he 
is here. But how in the world do you suppose 
it happens } And where is the other ? ” 

“ How does it happen, you goose ^ It happens 
that he knows who is on this boat. That is how 
it happens.” 

“ Breakfast ready, miss,” grinned and spoke 
the waiter from below. They hurried down 
stairs ; and, as Effie had expected, but had not 
dared to say, next their seats they found a chair 
turned down by the waiter, as if reserved for a 
passenger delayed ; and Dr. Summerfield’s seat 
was changed. He was sitting on the opposite 
side of the table. Effie made the breakfast 
loiter as long as she could, from the beginning. 
But she need not have taken this trouble. Fred- 
eric Haydock’s toilet was made, and well made, 
in five minutes. He came and shook hands, 
and sat down cheerily and freshly ; and you 
would never guess that he had been all night 
riding across northern Mississippi in a planter’s 
wagon, that he might strike the “ Boone ” as he 
had done. 

“ This time we did not expect you, Mr. Hay- 
dock,” said Effie, merrily. 

Hester Sutphen wondered if she were blush- 


84 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


ing. Why in the world need Efhe have said 
that nonsense upstairs ? 

“ I am amazed at my own success,” said he, 
frankly. “ The moment I found the ‘ Boone ’ 
was off, with you on board, I was determined that 
I would overhaul her somewhere.” 

“ Good for you,” would have been Effie’s ejac- 
ulation had she been used to slang, even in its 
more gracious forms, and had she dared say what 
she thought. But she and Hester both silently 
respected the courage of the man. 

And so a jolly breakfast follows. Haydock 
was courtesy itself to Dr. Summerfield. He 
made that nice old man find out that in taking 
care of these ladies he had won Mr. Frederic 
Haydock’s abiding regard, if that were worth 
any thing. Haydock told, with great humor, 
the details of his adventures the day before — of 
how and when he learned that the ladies were 
in Memphis, and then how he took the afternoon 
train and pursued. He did not tell, nor did 
Hester guess, what Effie figured out from the 
guide-book afterwards — that his night-ride 
across those rough country roads was well-nigh 
forty miles long. 

Then followed an ideal morning. Oh, thou 
hunted and baited child of civilization, think, if 


OF A PULLMAN. 


85 


thou canst, what it would be to spend one morn- 
ing of life without a bore, without a newspaper, 
without a mail, without a telegram, without a 
beggar, and without a morning call ! Nay, think 
more than this ! Think what it would be to 
have these evils wholly impossible to thee. Then 
imagine a bland April morning of the latitude of 
Mississippi — a new flora passing like a shifting 
panorama — shade if you wish shade, sun if you 
wish sun — imagine books, pencils, paints, pa- 
pers, ink, canvas, a good piano, and dear friends 
— and then say whether life has a right to ask 
any thing more than it finds on such a morning 
on such a craft as the “ Chester Boone” ? 

Dr. Summerfield asked Effie what was meant 
by “ tone ” in pictures. 

Effie said if he would come out on the western 
guard — they called it “ western ” though it often 
looked north and south — she would show him 
Ruskin’s experiment which illustrates his defini- 
tion. And so before Dr. Summerfield knew it 
he and Effie were talking art, and he was watch- 
ing her practice for three hours there. 

And Frederick Haydock and Hester Sutphen 
were walking up and down the deck forward till 
she was tired. And then he had made for her a 
seat where there was no wind and just a little 


86 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


warmth from the chimney. And he was telling 
her first about old school life at Antioch; what a 
noble, unselfish creature Hiram Brinkerhoff was ; 
what a loss it was to him to lose Hiram, and how 
happy they had been together. He told her of 
the war, how he had come down this very river 
with Sherman, told of adventures almost in sight 
of where the boat ran. Why ! he came, nobody 
could tell how, to telling of his experiences in 
New Orleans since ; what is the life of a lonely 
youngster there ; where it touches other life and 
where it does not ; how lonely it is, and what 
else it is ! 

And Frederic Haydock did not do all the talk- 
ing. Hester Sutphen told him things, which she 
might have put in the newspaper, but which in 
truth she had never told to a human being. She 
told of her early life, of her father’s death, of 
Norton and the Wheaton Academy, and how 
strange it seemed to her when she was hardly 
seventeen to be managing for herself as a teacher 
of girls in the Southwest Milan Seminary. She 
fairly caught herself asking him, as if he had 
been Efifie Abgar herself, if he thought she did 
wrong when she defied the secretary of the trus- 
tees at Southwest Milan. 

And Frederic Haydock had to bite his tongue 
out lest he should say. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


87 


“ You cannot do wrong. If you said it, it was 
right." 

But he did not say that. Metaphorically he 
did bite his tongue out, and then with the new 
tongue, which came in the place of that bitten 
one, he said : 

I do not know what you call right. I know 
that I should have been much pleased with my- 
self if I had been half so civil. And I am so glad 
you left the brutes, if you did leave them." 

“ Leave them ! " said Hester. “ I left that 
horrid place before night, and I hope I may 
never see it again. My dear Mr. Haydock, I did 
not know " — 

But what she did not know Fred Haydock was 
not told. Just at that moment from the deck 
below, a clear tenor voice sang : 



88 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


fH 

TTV W~ 




1 


1— ^ 


1 

r m 

““1 d 

1 

1 J 0 




1 1 

1 #- 

0 0 

• r- 






L_ 

-U — 


home; I’m just git-ting read-y, For I’m go-ing home. 


The wild, dear notes rang out so as to startle 
them both. Hester ran forward to look over the 
rail, and Haydock, without so much eagerness, 
followed. Neither he nor she knew that three 
hours had passed since breakfast. 

The voice went on : 

I found free grace in de wilderness, 

In de wilderness, in de wilderness ; 

I found free grace in de wilderness, 

For Pm a going home. 

For Pm going home, for Pm going home ; 

Pm just gitting ready, for Pm going home. 

With the third verse some twenty of the deck 
hands took up the chorus : 

My father preaches in de wilderness, 

In de wilderness, in de wilderness, — 

And so the weird song went on ; — and Mr. Hay- 
dock’s tete-a-Ute with Miss Sutphen was, for the 
moment, ended. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


89 


CHAPTER IX. 

A S they went south the shores grew greener, 
and the air more soft. Once, as they ran 
in to the levee for some wood, Effie broke off with 
her own hand a branch of fresh leaves, quite 
large. Fred Haydock told her that she was the 
dove after the deluge. And after every meal, 
dinner, supper, breakfast — how few they were 
when one came to count them — it seemed more 
and more a thing of course that, while Effie 
painted on the after-guards, or wrote in the after- 
cabin, Mr. Haydock and Miss Sutphen should be 
sitting in some shelter forward, or that he should 
be reading to her the “ Ring and the Book ” while 
she knitted, or that they should be walking to- 
gether for exercise, or in the evening, they should 
be singing together at the same piano. It was 
clear enough, however, the first time that Fred 
Haydock sang, that he was not the absolute 
tenor who had sung the praise of his own Amy in 
the dark Palace on the banks of the Jiniata. 


90 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


And all three of them — all four, if you count 
in Dr. Summerfield, who was very lovely and 
kind all the time — all four came to be good 
friends with the other cabin travellers. They 
had good novels which they read aloud in the 
ladies’ end of the cabin. At night they had glees 
or psalmody. At the mouth of the Tennessee 
River the boat had taken on a very wild but very 
simple family, who had somehow heard of Texas 
and were going there, with the most pathetic 
ignorance as to what and where it was, and why 
they were going. But, from the old grandsire of 
eighty-five, who seemed for ever young when 
there was a question as to a new home, down to 
shy girls of four years and adventurous boys of 
six and seven, dressed in the most extraordinary 
costume which ever the wit of Northern Ala- 
bama devised, all were delighted to be on the 
move. 

And to the magic of Effie’s kindness this tall 
handsome girl, shy as the children, who for a day 
staid in her state-room she was so frightened, re- 
vealed herself as a bride. Never did the designer, 
in distant Lawrence, who painted the pattern 
for that calico, suppose it was to be worn as a 
bride’s travelling dress ! But no matter for that ! 
As true a heart beat under it as ever beat under 


OF A PULLMAN. 


91 


Madame Demorest’s regulation uniform, and she 
and he, so soon as they were married in the old 
home on the western slope of the Alleghanies 
back in Western Virginia, had determined to go 
to Florida. Why to Florida, even Effie, with all 
her tact, could not discover. She tried them with 
talk of oranges and sugar-cane and bananas. 
But they seemed to have little care for these 
things. Even Effie could not imagine that that 
stout young bridegroom had a hole in his lungs. 
No ! It was only that they were determined that 
they would go somewhere and that they had 
heard of Florida. 

“ Like some other people I know,” said Hester, 
meekly, “ who might be sitting over a hard coal 
fire now, if they wanted to.” 

“ Only they did not want to,” said Mrs. Abgar, 
laughing. “ Dear heart, it is the mania of the 
American people. They must ‘ pull up stakes ’ 
and travel.” 

“ Say, rather,” said Dr. Summerfield, more 
wisely, “it is the mania of that part of the 
American people whom you and I meet in steam- 
boats. If we wanted to study the traits of those 
who stay at home we must knock at the doors of 
their homes to find them.” 

“ That’s true enough ! I am as wise as the Eng- 


92 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


lish travellers who think all Americans live in 
hotels, because those they see in hotels live in 
them. What can they think the houses they ride 
by are built for } ” 

They had poked their great nose upon the levee 
once and again, — now to leave a barrel, now, it 
would seem, only to leave a newspaper — perhaps 
to take an order — once to leave two bedsteads, a 
rocking-chair, a cooking-stove, a bride, her trunks 
and a bridegroom ; in short, for any device by 
which civilization might be set forward in what 
seemed an utter wilderness. It was quite late in 
the afternoon that the clerk came aft for the pur- 
pose to say that they had some heavy boilers to 
land at Mr. Van Meter’s plantation, and perhaps 
the ladies would like to walk. 

Like to ! — of course they did. They landed 
and were almost tempted to kneel like crusaders 
and kiss the sod, so delicious was it to find spring 
really in sway, — to gather a handful of even the 
simplest weeds. They struck off, up the river, on 
the levee for a long pull, assured that they might 
safely be gone an hour. But — shall it be con- 
fessed.? — in ten minutes Hester was frightened. 
If the “Boone” should go with all their house- 
hold goods, and they have to spend the rest of 
their lives in Mississippi ! Dr. Summerfield tried 


OF A PULLMAN, 


93 


to reassure her. But the pleasure of the walk 
was gone, and after pretending they were not' 
afraid a little they turned back with one accord, 
built larger their branches of green leaves, and, 
like Birnam Wood indeed, approached the friendly 
monster. 

It was impossible to believe that they had 
been only thirty hours on the boat. In that 
time they had entered on a wholly new arrange- 
ment of time and life. They had passed from 
coal fires to balmy spring weather and delicate 
green foliage ; and also — ah me ! — Hester Sut- 
phen had held two long confidential talks with 
Fred Haydock. It seemed as if they had been 
a month on the voyage and the boat was home. 

As they drew near the boat a gentleman came 
out from a little whitewashed shed which seemed 
to be an outlying building of the plantation, of 
which the larger buildings were hidden by trees, 
a quarter of a mile away. He took out money, 
which he gave to the black boy by his side, and 
then with rapid step advanced to the “ Chester 
Boone,” about a hundred yards in front of our 
party. The boy followed with his carpet-bag. 

Frederic Haydock and Hester Sutphen were 
walking behind Dr. Summerfield and Mrs. Abgar, 
occupied with each other. 


94 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Effie had her eyes open. She suddenly made 
a horrible botch about something Dr. Summer- 
field was telling her, and said she was very glad 
Mr. Glass was deposed by his Presbytery, when 
she did not in the least know what she was say- 
ing. The truth was that she was simply watch- 
ing the stranger and the black boy. At last she 
forced herself to turn back and say, 

“ Mr. Haydock, is not that your friend Mr. 
Brinkerhoff 

Fred Haydock started, had the question .re- 
peated to him, looked forward and cried, “ Of 
course,” then with a queer school-boy war-whoop 
and three shrill calls, “ Hi ! hi ! hi ! ” he brought 
the stranger to bay. 

The moment Hiram Brinkerhoff turned he 
recognized them. A minute more and they were 
all together, and he was congratulating himself 
that he had not taken the “ Morgan,” as she 
passed down that very day. 

To say the truth Effie Abgar was not very 
sorry. P'or she had felt already that the time 
might come when Dr. Summerfield should be 
perfectly informed as to tone, color, perspective, 
middle distance, foreground, broken lights, mo- 
tive and action ; and she was quite certain that 
she had herself received all she could digest as 


OF A PULLMAN. 


95 


to the relations between the Directors of the 
Publishing Board and the Trustees, and about 
the legitimate supervision of the Board of Mana- 
gers and the President on the affairs of both 
these bodies. ' 

For Frederic Haydock and Hester Sutphen, 
they seemed to be in a mood in which most 
things were satisfactory. Both of them seemed 
to think it was quite as well that Hiram Brink- 
erhoff should be there. They would have 
thought it quite as well if he had not been there. 

For Hiram Brinkerhoff himself, he expressed 
himself very promptly the moment they were all 
on board. 

“ It is so lucky that I struck you ! Have you 
ever seen a sugar plantation, Mrs. Abgar 1 ” 

“ Only in Vermont,” said she. “ We put on 
long boots, and then I filled mine with wet snow 
and retired ignominiously.” 

“ Then you are just the person to see the 
finest plantation in the United States, and I 
believe in the world. If you count in the men 
and women who carry it on, you will say so too.” 

Fred Haydock and Miss Sutphen were by 
this time looking at something in his scrap-book, 
which he had brought out from his state-room. 

Miss Sutphen ! ” cried the impetuous Hiram, 


96 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


eager in his plan, let me interrupt you for a 
moment, for this must be settled before the boat 
starts. Would not you like to make a visit at 
the finest sugar plantation on the river ? We 
could stop to-morrow night.” 

“ What did you say ? ” said Hester, startled a 
little, and hardly getting her vessel into action. 

I want to persuade you ladies to stop at a 
beautiful plantation on the river and see the way 
people live here. Will you stay if Mrs. Abgar 
will.?” 

“ Stay — where .? ” said Mrs. Abgar. “ This is 
the first I have heard of it. You do not expect 
us to stay anywhere where we are not invited.” 

“No, indeed; but if you will only do it you 
will be invited in no time. This is the whole 
story,” — and Hiram had to speak fast, for the 
bell was beginning to ring the wandering pas- 
sengers on board — “I am on my way down to 
this earthly paradise, a fine plantation on the' 
coast. Mrs. Abgar, it is called Arcadie ; is not 
that a pretty name .? Mr. Le Clerc will be de- 
lighted if you will both make them a visit, and 
Madame Le Clerc and my lovely friend Eugenie 
and Miss Ferguson, they are all so nice. Now 
just say you could possibly stop there, and they 
would be so much pleased to see you.” Then, as 


OF A PULLMAN. 


97 


he saw his friend Fred’s woe-begone face, Hiram 
added, “ If you would all give up just two days to 
see this beautiful place, why you would enjoy it 
as much in one way as you did Cincinnati in 
another.” 

By this happy word “ all ” poor Fred was saved 
from the lowest depths. If he was not to be 
counted out from the party they might stay a 
month for all he cared. 

But Mrs. Abgar was herself again. Without 
the least asperity, but with perfectly defined 
firmness, she said, “ Oh think a moment, Mr. 
Brinkerhoff, and you see it is out of the ques- 
tion. How could Miss Sutphen and I think of 
pushing ourselves, never so indirectly, on people 
we had never seen } ” 

Hiram Brinkerhoff saw he had made a botch 
of it, and had sense enough not to persist in a 
blunder. He retired to arrange for his state- 
room, and in a few minutes the boat was under 
way. 

That evening Doctor Summerfield was able to 
prepare his quarterly report, without giving up 
his time to the instruction or entertainment of 
Mrs. Abgar. Mr. Hiram Brinkerhoff and she sat 
in the pilot-house, while Mr. Haydock and Miss 
Sutphen were well wrapped in travelling cloaks 
7 


98 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


somewhere forward. Were they studying the 
newer stars which began to appear south of the 
sky lines more familiar to her ? Were they dis- 
cussing favorite novels ? Was he telling her old 
stories of the camp, and she, to her own surprise, 
going over old hidden experiences of her own 
life which she had hardly entrusted even to 
Effie Ah me! I cannot tell. Only it was a 
long eager talk, and neither of them knew how 
fast the time passed by. 

For Mrs. Abgar, she was not sorry, as has 
been said, to have so intelligent a man to talk 
with. The pilot said but little, sometimes had a 
word for a young man by him, what Mark Twain 
calls a cub, — who regarded him with untold 
reverence, and seemed to be learning to pilot ; 
and, when Effie or Hiram Brinkerhoff asked for 
any information, the pilot gave it cordially and 
intelligently. A monarch he, and a well-bred 
monarch, who knew his place. Mrs. Abgar was 
not more than woman. She was not, therefore, 
without curiosity to learn more about that Amy 
of whom he had sung with the exquisite tenor, 
and with whom he was more in love than ever, 
after fifteen years. Hiram Brinkerhoff was not 
a pennyweight more than man. He was, there- 
fore, very curious to know more of the Philip 


OF A PULLMAN. 


99 


Abgar who was willing to let this beautiful wife 
travel without escort so far from home for so 
long a time. Why did she never drop a word 
about him ? Perhaps Effie asked herself the 
question, “ Why did he never drop a word about 
Amy ? ” But, when she made little plans of lead- 
ing up to the unknown Amy, somehow she had 
not the courage to carry them out. And for him, 
in his blundering man-fashion, he took it for 
granted that something would reveal all myste- 
ries about Philip Abgar, and so he made no 
plans at all. So the long evening sped by with- 
out any personal talk. But it were hard to tell 
what other subject, except these personal mat- 
ters, was not talked upon. Art, criticism, litera- 
ture, poetry, actors, actresses, artists of every 
kind, music and musicians, the opera and the 
great singers, magazines and publishers, the 
authors he had known and those she wanted to 
know, the books she had read and those of them 
which he knew and those he did not know, his- 
tory, philosophy, theology, religion, hymns and 
hymn-writers, preachers and sermons, politics, 
politicians, race, beggars, social science, charity, 
housekeeping, party-giving, dancing, talking, 
friends, friendship, love, marriage, home, educa- 
tion, schools, public and private, governesses, 


100 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


only children, large families — what in the world 
does not come in review when a thoughtful, 
high-trained young man, who has lived much 
alone, has travelled much abroad and has read 
many books, happens to meet with a high- 
trained young woman, who has read many 
books, has lived much alone and has never gone 
abroad ! 

What interested Effie most, or what she 
thought interested her most, was that he had 
not only seen many States, but “ many men.” 
She remembered the classical lines. He had 
the most modest way of speaking of them, but 
he seemed to have had a gift of meeting just the 
interesting people. Thus, when they talked of 
style, she said, “ General Grant’s English is re- 
markably good. Did you happen to read his 
report of the very last battle of the war.?” 

“ I was in Washington the day it was pub- 
lished. As it happened, I had met him only the 
night before, and it seemed as if he were talk- 
ing.” 

Or, when something was said of the perspec- 
tive of clouds, and she cited Ruskin, he said, 
“No man looks less like your idea of him. He 
came into the reading-room of the Workingmen’s 
College, once when I was sitting there, and fell 


OF A PULLMAN. 


lOI 


into talk with a gentleman by my side.” He 
had seen Napoleon at his last review ; he had 
heard Martineau preach ; he was present when 
the Queen opened Parliament ; he was on duty 
at Norfolk the day Jeff. Davis was imprisoned; 
he had in his trunk the photograph likeness 
which the President of Mexico had given him. 
All this came out by the merest accidents; nor 
was there the least wish on his part to say, “ I 
was here,” or “ I was there.” But, in three hours’ 
talk, there were just enough of these accidents to 
surprise Efifie with the thought of how very quiet 
her life had been — and how much it had been a 
life of books while his had been a life of action. 

On his part there was not surprise that she 
knew so much, and had thought so much, and 
had felt so much. For Efide Abgar was not the 
first intelligent and charming woman whom 
Hiram Brinkerhoff had met in this active life. 
Perhaps there was no surprise at all. Perhaps, 
from the first, he took her even balance, what 
seemed to him the perfect harmony of her 
thoughts and her emotions, as something en- 
tirely of course in a woman whose voice was so 
sweet, whose face was so lovely, whose motion 
was so graceful, and whose bearing was so digni- 
fied and yet so easy. When he went to bed that 


102 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


night, and tried to analyze the delight of this 
long evening’s talk, he did not own to surprise. 
He took it all as a thing of course that it should 
be delightful. What was unusual, he said to 
himself, was that she should be so thoroughly 
right, even on subjects where you would have 
said she might know nothing, and might never 
have thought. That with sense so acute, and 
passions so warm, she should never overstep by 
a hair’s breadth ; and that with judgment so 
steady, analysis so perfect, and conscience so 
stern, she should never be cold, nor fall short by 
a hand-breadth. Her choice of words was won- 
derful. Any fool could see that, he said to him- 
self. But how in the world does she know 
things which nobody can have told her; pass 
correct judgment on the instant in cases which 
she has not heard argued ; and, in short, without 
any experience of the world, more than rival in 
nicety of perception the oldest stager of them 
all.? 

All which, Master Hiram Brinkerhoff, is to 
ask why a truly noble woman is wholly outside 
and beyond the scales, and standards, and meas- 
uring staves of your human philosophies and 
analyses. 

All four — they slept in their several state- 


OF A PULLMAN. 


103 


rooms happily and soundly. It was only Dr. Sum- 
merfield, who sat up too late over his figures, and 
could not make the accounts balance, who lay toss- 
ing in bed regretting his third cup of green tea. 

Our little story must not linger. Given two 
ladies who loved each other, and two men who 
loved each other, who had so fortunately and so 
skilfully gained together the luxurious repose 
and companionship of a first-class packet-boat 
on the river ; it is not hard to imagine one part 
of what passed on the happy spring day which 
followed their meeting. For that varied adven- 
ture which relieves such a voyage of all monot- 
ony, the story must not pause to speak of it. 
Only, after dinner, after the ladies’ naps, when 
they were all together in the pilot-house, a smoke 
miles below, far down beyond the green, an- 
nounced an approaching vessel. Before the 
travellers could make out her form, the pilot had 
declared that she was the “ River Queen ” on 
her way up from New Orleans. 

A mile in five minutes by one boat, and a mile 
in three minutes by the other, as they approach 
each other, bring the two soon together. Then 
signals by the bell intimated that the “ Queen ” 
wished to speak the “ Boone ; ” the engines of 
each boat were slowed,” and they drew near 


104 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


each other cautiously. An instant more showed 
that no one was to cross from boat to boat as 
had been at first supposed. The first officer of 
the “Queen” showed himself on her Texas, and 
in his hand waved a paper parcel. As the boats 
passed he flung it with a skilful throw; one of 
the hands of the “ Boone ” caught it and tossed 
it to the waiting captain above. Both boats 
swept off on their course, whistled courteously a 
parting salute, and, as they say in the French 
chambers, “ the incident was exhausted.” 

Not quite exhausted ! In a moment more the 
captain came up into the pilot-house, a most un- 
usual courtesy. He handed to Mrs. Abgar a 
letter. 

“ The ‘ Queen * stopped to leave this for you, 
Madame. Mr. Haydock, here is yesterday’s 
‘ Picayune. ’ ” And he gave him the newspaper. 

“ For me!” cried Effie, amazed. 

“ For you!” cried Hester. 

And Effie broke open her letter. 

From Mrs. Le Clerc to Mrs. E. Abgar. 

Arcadie, Wednesday Evening. 

My dear Mrs. Abgar, — I have only to-day 
learned that you are to be in our neighborhood with 
your friends, and I write, although in haste, to beg 
you not to pass us on your way down the river. I 


OF A PULLMAN. 


105 


know very well how much of pleasure you have 
before you. But surely, after your long journey, you 
will need some rest, and I cannot but hope that you 
and your friends will stay with us long enough to 
secure it. 

Really, although our life is very simple, there will 
be a good deal here that will be new to you ; and, at 
the least, we can assure you of a cordial Southern 
welcome. 

Do not feel as if we were strangers. I must know 
many friends of yours among my Northern friends, 
and our friend Miss Ferguson, who is as eager as I 
am that you shall stay with us, feels sure that her 
niece was at Miss Sutphen’s school. 

Be sure that your visit will be to us a very real 
pleasure. My husband will be on the levee to wel- 
come you as the “ Boone ” comes in. 

Very truly yours. 

Adelie Le Clerc. 

That is hospitality,” said Effie Abgar, after 
she had twice read through the letter, and made 
sure that it was indeed for her. 

“ How in the world did they know we were 
here.^” said Hester. “I know, Effie. They 
must have been friends of that nice Mrs. Cheyne 
in Louisville. She said she had a sister on the 
coast ; and I did not know what ‘ on the coast ' 
meant.” 

Then Effie had to speak, though she knew she 


io6 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


crimsoned as she did so. “ I do not think they 
are Mrs. Cheyne’s friends. They are Mr. Brink- 
erh off’s friends ; and this is the Arcadie he de- 
scribed. Is it not so } ” 

“ Certainly it is,” said he, frankly. “ There is 
no mystery. You said you could not go without 
an invitation. I cannot but hope you will go, 
now you see how much pleasure you will give.” 

“ It would be very churlish to refuse so kind a 
request,” said Efhe, quite carefully. “ Do you 
not think so, Hester } ” 

And both the gentlemen stepped forward to 
ask the pilot a question. 

“Effie,” said Hester, in a whisper, “if you 
think it right, I should like to go of all things.” 

“Think it right.?” said Mrs. Abgar. “ It would 
be almost rude to refuse.” 

So they asked the gentlemen at what time 
they should pass the house. Not till after mid- 
night ! But if Mr. Le Clerc were waiting for 
them in the cold, all the more rude to pass by ! 
The gentlemen went down and made the ar- 
rangement with the captain. 

And Effie Abgar felt, that in her first trial of 
strength with this modest, thoughtful, deter- 
mined Hiram Brinkerhoff, she had come off 
second best. • 

And she was not sorry. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


107 


CHAPTER X. 



HE mystery of the invitation is easily ex- 


plained. The moment Mr. Brinkerhoff had 
found that he had begun at the wrong end with 
Mrs. Abgar, and that her New England sense 
of the proprieties was entirely shocked by the 
idea of appearing anywhere uninvited, he had 
walked to the clerk’s office and had written this 
telegram to Mrs. Le Clerc : 

“ Mrs. Abgar and party are on ‘ Boone.’ Would 
you like to see them ? ” 

He had given his negro attendant the despatch, 
had bidden him pull across the river “ like fury,” 
and deliver it at Chicot at the telegraph office. A 
silver half dollar, in those days an unusual sight, 
had stimulated the boy. Fortunately for Hiram, 
he had written from Cincinnati a full letter to 
Mrs. Le Clerc describing the picture gallery and 
the ladies they met there, and had gone into some 
little detail about them and their plans. Thus 
was it that she was well prepared to write her 


io8 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


courteous invitation, when, within two hours 
after his despatch was written, she received it at 
Arcadie. 

Of course the kind letter involved a change 
of plan. The ladies had to pack their trunks 
Friday night instead of Saturday morning. Fred 
Haydock hesitated whether he would or would 
not accept Hiram’s invitation to stay at Arcadie 
as his friend. But at last the doubtful scale de- 
cided in favor of staying. He could not bear to 
bid Hiram good-by that night perhaps for fifteen 
years more. If they parted now. Heaven only 
knew when they should meet again. So the 
friendly captain was informed that all four would 
leave the boat at Arcadie. 

The friendly captain was not sure that he 
should know which plantation was Arcadie, nor 
was the friendly pilot. As for Mr. Le Clerc’s 
name, there were three or four gentlemen of that 
name within twenty miles of each other on the 
“ Coast.” So now Effie and Hester began to be 
afraid that they should be left at midnight at a 
strange plantation, where the lady did not even 
know Hiram Brinkerhoff when she saw him. 
The disgrace of such an accident overwhelmed 
Effie, whose imagination was brilliant enough to 
forecast every step of the mad adventure — the 


OF A PULLMAN. 


109 


landing on a muddy levee ; the poking along in the 
dark among howling curs and blind avenues, till 
they came to the back-door of the wrong house ; 
the knocking, timidly, and then wildly, for en> 
trance — the head poked out of a window — the 
cross question and the meek reply. 

Why had she ever committed herself to an ad- 
venture so crazy ! When she had once said 
No ! ” why had she not held to it ? What a 
goose to give way — only because a pretty note, 
in a nice hand-writing, on a neat sheet of note- 
paper, had been thrown on board the boat ! Why 
had she not held to tl^e regular etiquettes to 
which she was born ! 

But when some broken words of hers expressed 
such doubts, the wondering pilot turned his 
broadest face and kindliest smile on her. He 
bade her lose all fear. “ We shall find ’em some- 
how,” he said ; but how he was to find them, in 
the darkness of midnight, with the river mist 
hanging over land and water, the pilot did not 
explain. 

The news of so large a departure was, in its 
way, quite a shock to the little party in the 
ladies’ cabin. But by ten all the other passengers 
had “ told good by,” as the Southern phrase has 
it ; only Dr. Summerfield sat up a little longer. 


1 10 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


In half an hour more, however, that worthy man 
parted from them, and then, hour after hour, the 
vigils continued of the four. The law of Natural 
Selection, which another generation called the 
law of “ Elective Affinities,” left Hester talking 
with Frederic and Effie with Hiram. 

Twelve o’clock, and they talked. 

One o’clock, and they talked. 

Quarter to two, and a lad came aft to say, 
“The landing is in sight, ladies. You need not 
hurry. You have fifteen minutes before we are 
there.” 

“ Then how in the world can the landing be in 
sight ? ” asked the impetuous Hester. And they 
all walked forward to see. 

Far, far away as the boat rushed on was a speck 
of light. This the ladies were told was the signal 
on shore which Mr. Le Clerc had lighted to direct 
the pilot. 

“ How like Robinson Crusoe ! I can see him in 
the picture, piling on the logs ! Only no vessel 
came ! ” 

There was a fascination for a minute or two in 
watching the speck. Then the girls went back 
for their traps ; and, with shawl-straps, umbrellas 
and the rest, stood waiting. The boat rushed 
toward its goal faster than ever, it seemed. A 


OF A PULLMAN. 


1 1 1 


few minutes more and they could see a white 
shed and dark figures moving to and fro. Nearer 
and nearer ! There is no place along that steep 
shore where a boat cannot run up and land her 
passengers. Nearer and nearer ! A gentleman 
with a lad behind him is visible, and three or four 
larger Negroes. Nearer and nearer ! The great 
landing-plank of the larboard side swung round 
and hovered above the shore. “Ting! ting I ”• 
The pilot stopped the engines. Flash I from the 
depths appeared two great pine-knot torches, 
which, with the pine fire on shore, make the 
whole as light as day. 

“ All ready, madam 1 ” 

“ Good-by I Good-by, captain ! ” 

And the ladies ran on shore led by the gentle- 
men, fast followed by porters with trunks. An 
instant, and all are landed, the porters are back 
again, “ ting ! ting I ” and the palace sweeps off, 
while the ladies and their friends are receiving 
the welcome of their new home. 

“The boys will see to the trunks. It is so 
short a walk that I have no carriage here. Will 
Mrs. Abgar take my arm } — or which is Mrs. 
Abgar .? ” 

So cordial, so thoughtful in every act were the 
father and son, that Effie’s terrors were gone in a 


I 12 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


moment. In a merry party they walked through 
the gloom which settled on them as they left the 
pine fire. It did seem mysterious enough. Great 
trees concealed the stars from them, and how and 
why Mr. Le Clerc turned when he did, or bade 
her avoid this step or that, or found a gate to 
open, Effie did not know. But all wondering was 
short. In a couple of minutes they were on the 
steps of an immense veranda. The open door 
of a hall which was a hall, cheerfully lighted, 
invited their entrance. A lady stood in the door- 
way, and stepped cheerfully forward to say, — 

“ Welcome to Arcadie ! ” 

“ I am ashamed to appear at such an hour,” 
said Effie, and more ashamed now that you 
have been sitting up for us.” 

“ My dear friend, it is nothing. Mrs. Le Clerc 
was sorry not to do so, but I would not let her. 
She is not quite well. And you must be so tired ! ” 
The welcome, the simplicity and ease, and the 
beauty and completeness of every arrangement, 
made the ladies feel more at home than they 
could have believed possible. Glad to go to bed, 
of course, at two o'clock in the morning. But, as 
they pulled aside their mosquito nets, they could 
not but talk a little about the charm which 
seemed to have surrounded them from the 


O/^'A PULLMAN, 


I13 


moment the magic light had appeared in the 
distance. Palace after palace welcomes them on 
their travels. But in this palace one is so thor- 
oughly at home ! 

And how deliciously sleep comes on when one 
does not hear the distant thud, thud ” of the 
engine, and when one’s body from head to foot 
does not vibrate with the jar of the gigantic 
wheels ! 

The thoughtful Hiram had telegraphed to New 
Orleans for the letters which awaited the ladies 
there, and, as they sat at a late breakfast, these 
letters were brought in. Perhaps this seemed 
even more like magic to Effie and Hester than 
the roses and jasmines which were in fresh heaps 
around them. It did show how long was Mr. 
Brinkerhoff’s arm, and how thoughtful his kind- 
ness. And Effie looked her gratitude to him when 
she understood at last that the letters did not rain 
down by miracle. Perhaps the one only thing in 
life that she had longed for, as she dressed her- 
self, was that she might know that all at home 
were well. 

While the Northern ladies sat reading their 
letters, the Southern ladies, one of whom was 
Northern too, fell upon Mr. Brinkerhoff in talk : 

“ And how is dear Mrs. Brinkerhoff } ” 

8 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


1 14 


“ Thank you. She was very well when I left 
her. I am disappointed that there is no letter 
from her.” 

“ Is she as young and as lovely as ever } ” 

“ I am sure I think so,” said Hiram, blushing 
scarlet. “ She is as busy as ever with her schools 
and her sewing, and her what not. I tell her she 
tries to run half the world.” 

“ And why did you not bring her with you } ” 
and so on. 

Both Hester Sutphen and Effie Abgar after- 
wards acknowledged to each other, guiltily, that 
they drank in every word while they pretended 
to be reading letters of which just then they did 
not see one line ! 

But if they are ever to go to Texas the story 
must not loiter even in Arcadie. All the same 
they loitered there. The gentlemen had to tear 
themselves away after the second day. Uncle 
Sam’s business and the business of Jeffrey, Petrie 
& Jeffrey admitted no more delay. Even Mr. Le 
Clerc’s ingenuity could not pretend that the 
United States government needed Mr. Haydock 
at Arcadie or that Mr. Brinkerhoff would find 
large firms of retailers of drugs at the little vil- 
lage at the Post-office. 

The ladies stayed longer. “ Why do you 


OF A PULLMAN. 


I15 


not spend the summer?” said Mrs. Le Clerc, 
very sweetly and frankly. “You say you ran 
away from that horrible snow and ice, only to be 
in a pleasant home. Shall you find any thing 
pleasanter than this in that murderous Texas ? ” 
And indeed Hester wondered at her own firmness 
that she said “ No.” For, as to Effie, she had not 
been firm. She had confessed that the plan of 
the party was none of hers. Arcadie seemed so 
lovely to her that she would have eaten lotos 
there as long as there was lotos to eat. And all 
the plan-making was thrown back upon poor 
Hester. 

Before the gentlemen left, poor Fred Haydock 
was nearly beside himself, because he neither 
dared ask Hester’s leave to stay for ever where 
she stayed, and, on the other hand, because he 
dared not go away without asking. So they 
came to the last afternoon, which was given to a 
party on the canal. The canal leads back from 
the river to a lake or bayou ; how far back the 
explorers did not find. Nor did they care indeed. 
It was always afternoon to them, and whatever 
they saw was May ! 

In a great cart drawn by three mules abreast 
were many chairs, in which the ladies sat and 
rode, escorted by the gentlemen on horseback. 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


1 16 


Then they arrived at a narrow canal, in which 
were a large and a small flat-boat. Haydock and 
Fred Le Clerc, who had made paddles for the 
occasion, went in advance in the smaller boat. 
The oldsters, with the little girl and her nurse, 
went in the large boat, towed by a negro man 
named Antoine, on shore. 

The canal was only wide enough for the boat. 
On both sides were the most interesting and 
wonderful trees and shrubs and vines, perfectly 
green. Indeed it looked, as Mrs. Abgar said, 
like the pictures of Paradise, where they always 
mix up pines and palms and land and water. 
They saw no bears nor deer, though there are 
plenty there. But they did see, oh ! so many 
beautiful birds ! So they sailed for perhaps three 
miles more, with new wonders all the time. Then 
they came where a large cypress-tree had been 
felled across the canal ! What was it to them ? 
To sit still or to sail — it was all one! The 
pioneers rejoined them, and Effie made a nice, 
characteristic sketch, and then the learned said 
that it would not be afternoon any longer, and 
that they must turn their faces home. 

But when they came back to the cart, lo I a 
chance for an adventure I Mr. Le Clerc’s horse 
had broken his bridle and run away. Now the 


OF A PULLMAN. 


I17 


thoughtful Mrs. Le Clerc had arranged that Miss 
Sutphen should ride him home, because she had 
guessed that before Mr. Haydock left, he and 
Miss Hester would be well left together for an 
hour without listeners. Kind Mrs. Le Clerc ! 
What perfect hospitality ! And now } Why had 
this beast broken bridle ? Fred Haydock, who 
generally believed in his star, and not without 
reason, could have groaned aloud — would have 
done so but that the manners of civilized society 
forbid. Did Hester care.? Quien sabef Wild 
horses would not have made her tell. With 
perfect willingness she seemed to acquiesce. 
Fred Le Clerc and Hiram both offered their 
horses, but not even Mrs. Le Clerc dared say 
that they could be trusted with an unskilful 
rider and the flutter of that rider s dress. Hes- 
ter stepped up into the cart by the ready chair, 
begged Mrs. Le Clerc not to think of her nor be 
worried, assured Mr. Le Clerc that there was 
room for him on her seat, and so they took up 
their way, when, as the twilight began to gloam, 
a hurrah, a rapid movement, and the horse reap- 
peared. He had run home, had been captured 
by a negro boy, and had been brought back in 
triumph. So he had six miles extra that day for 
his pains. The whole party stopped again. The 


i8 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


side-saddle was exchanged for the Mexican sad- 
dle which Mr. Le Clerc had ridden. Fred Le 
Clerc and Hiram, after seeing that they were 
not needed, dashed forward to announce at home 
that there was no accident. Frederic Haydock 
and Hester Sutphen followed more decorously, 
and the slow cart, with its trijuge team, as Mr. 
Le Clerc called it, brought up the steady rear. 

Hester tried her stirrup, tried her beast on dif- 
ferent paces, tried a canter over a deserted field, 
tried a sober walk. She was indeed conscious 
that, if she and Mr. Haydock rode quietly side by 
side, a crisis was not far away. 

And so it proved ! 

“ Miss Hester, if that horse had not come back 
I should have died ! ” 

“ Then we are very glad the horse came back,” 
said Hester. “ But why were you responsible ? ” 

“ Oh, not that ! I was not responsible. But 
all day long — oh. Miss Hester, do not laugh at 
me — all day long I have counted so on this half 
hour in which to tell you what you know so 
well.” 

And he was silent, and she knew she did 
know. But she said nothing. 

“ If it seems madness to you, let it seem so. 
If it seems foolish, let it seem so. But I cannot 


OF A PULLMAN. 


II9 


believe that I had never seen you before that day 
at Jersey City, and if you say I never must see 
you again — do not laugh now, Miss Hester — 
if you say that, I shall die. You have taught me 
a great deal in this fortnight. But you cannot 
teach me how to live without you.” 

Then Hester knew she must speak. The man 
had behaved manfully. He had his rights too. 
And Hester tried one sentence which would not 
come, and she tried another ; and then she looked 
frankly up to him — only he could not see her 
in the darkness — and she said, in just her 
freshest, sweetest way, 

“ And why should I try to ^ ” 

Then how he thanked her and blessed her ! 
Then how he promised her to be good to her and 
true to her and guard her as never woman was 
guarded ! Then how he told her about his par- 
adise at San Auguste ; or, if she liked it better, 
he could and would resign and go back to New 
Hampshire with her. Then how they fell back 
upon the Palace life; and she asked him if he 
knew that they thought he was a girl and called 
him Honora MacPherson. And then the rattle 
of the mules behind was heard, and they had to 
whip up and keep out of the way with a pace too 
fast for talking. And then they came upon a 


120 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


good place to walk — ah me ! all places were 
good to walk. Could they be all night in going 
home, it would be none too long. But the lights 
of the little homestead village would appear, and 
then the lights of Arcadie. 

And when they came to the house the whole 
family must rush to the piazza to meet them, and 
one would hold the horse, and another would 
take Hester’s whip, and Fred could only press 
her hand hard as she sprang to her feet. He 
could not clasp her round her waist, as he would 
have done had this been in the “ Pirate’s Com- 
panions ” or the “ Smugglers’ Prize,’’ and imprint 
a thousand kisses on her. 

For, alas ! the etiquette of modern society did 
not permit him. 

But fortune favors lovers, favors the brave, 
favors the good, and favors the young ! And 
Hester and Fred were lovers, were brave, were 
good, and were young ! Fortune was so kind 
that, after every bag was packed, after tea was 
finished, after all had been said which must be 
said, except “ Good-bye,” the “ George Christy ” 
did not come. Now it was in the “George 
Christy ” that the gentlemen were to go. And 
so they sat in the veranda or gallery, under the 
great colonnade, and waited for her, hour after 


OF A PULLMAN. 


I2I 


hour. And lovely Mrs. Le Clerc, with all her skill 
in letting people alone, took care that neither 
Bob nor Fanchon should come near Mr. Haydock 
for stories, nor Miss Sutphen for paper dolls. 
Two hours — three — of solid comfort before the 
“ Christy ” came ! 

Did M. Le Clerc know or did he not know, 
did he guess, or did he not guess, — when he 
asked Fred to sing “ Maudit Printemps,” byway 
of illustrating something he was telling Mrs. 
Abgar } 

Maudit ! ” said she : “ that is hard on poor 
Spring.” 

Oh ! ” replied he, laughing, that is only 
French fashion. It does not mean more than 
your Mr. Artemas Ward means by ‘ cussedness.’ 
Fred translates it ‘bothersome,’ when he sings 
it in English.” 

So Fred sang, — 


MAUDIT PRINTEMPS. 



122 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 




BOTHERSOME SPRING. 

I saw her sitting by her door, 

Half-hidden yonder mid the trees, 

And though we never met before 
Our kisses crossed with every breeze. 

Through naked boughs the winter through, 

From door to door the sight was plain, 

But now the leaves shut off the view : 

Oh Spring, why need you come again ! 

But now the leaves shut off the view. 

Oh Spring, why need you come again ’ 

But to Fred Haydock something else came as 
“ bothersome as spring. Even paradise cannot 


OF A PULLMAN. 


23 


last for ever. At last a faint whistle up the river. 
The groups break up, and watch, and listen. A 
louder whistle and a louder. The plash of paddle- 
wheels. 

“ We had better walk to the landing ! ” 

They all walked together ; and the “ Christy ” 
came. 

“ Good-bye ! ” 

“ Good-bye ! ” 


124 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


CHAPTER XL 

T3 UT where is the Pullman all this time ? ” 
asks the indignant reader. “ What do I 
care,” he growls, “ as to the loves or hates of Mr. 
Frederic Haydock and Miss Hester Sutphen ? 
It was ‘ the adventures of a Pullman ’ which were 
promised to me. And now, all that I am told is 
the fortunes of a palace afloat and the hospitality 
of a palace not on wheels.” 

Reader, be still, and persevere. 

For the week at Arcadie could not last for ever. 
And though they added six days more to it, 
those could not last for ever. If all had been stu- 
pid and dull, Hester would have thought it lasted 
for ever. But it was all light with kindness and 
love and new joy of spring, and new surprises of 
life unheard of by these Northern birds of pas- 
sage. For Hester there was now a note from 
Fred, now a letter, now a telegram. Now a boat 
would run up to the levee, and a black man 
would run down to the landing-place, and find 


OF A PULLMAN. 


125 


there a little parcel for “ Miss Sutphen, at Mr. 
George Le Clerc’s Arcadie*' and Hester would 
carry it to her room and return with a blush, 
with the very volume of Hamerton which she 
had spoken of to Miss Ferguson, and which they 
had both forgotten, but which the faithful Fred- 
eric had not forgotten. Ah, me ! how long are 
men’s arms, and how strong, when they are 
enough in love. 

Such weeks never last for ever ! 

So, when ended, the girls were kindly and ten- 
derly put on the “ St. Mary,” — a funny little 
stern-wheel boat, which was to go up the Red 
River. And their lonely life began again — but 
with such a chance to write long letters as per- 
haps the world gives nowhere else as it twirls 
round. 

There could hardly be a greater contrast in 
life than the change from the airy comfort of the 
large bed-rooms in the luxury of Arcadie to these 
little six-by-six state-rooms of the “ St Mary,” 
the snuffy air and the cotton quilts. “ Why they 
were ever called state-rooms,” said Effie, “is 
something I never could find out, for there is 
less state about them and more Spartan simpli- 
city than in any other place I go into.” Still, 
when she wrote home, after a day’s experience 


126 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


of the little boat, she said, “ Happy is the coun- 
try where the humblest emigrant going to the 
frontier has as good conveyance as we have. 
What you call the Law of Selection provides 
what everybody wants, even if it provide but 
little more. If there are few luxuries, there is 
still a good bed, a good table, and no end of kind- 
ness from these black men and black women 
around us.” 

For one generation, at least, no man need 
teach the black man or the black woman at the 
South, to be kind to the Northern traveller, — 
be that traveller whom he may ! 

The first day was Sunday. Yes, a quiet 
preacherless Sunday. The boat toiled on, as if 
indeed steam-engines were unknown to Moses, 
and not included in the comforts of the ten com- 
mandments. Yet the girls had their Bibles, — 
and Owen Feltham, and the dear old thumb- 
worn Fenelon, — and Vaughan’s “Hours with 
the Mystics,” — and Hester had a lovely talk with 
a nice Norwegian woman who could not speak a 
word of English, more than Hester could speak 
a word of Norwegian. But the fair-haired stran- 
ger produced her Norwegian Testament, and 
Hester had great joy in spelling out the bless- 
ings in the fifth chapter of Mattliew, and then 


OF A PULLMAN. 


127 


she showed her the same chapter in her book, in 
English. 

And there was a piano on the boat, — where 
should one go as civilization advances unless he 
had a piano with him ! — Why, you know it was 
behind the piano in the house in Kansas the 
other day that the panther sheltered himself till 
Mrs. Sloane could get her husband’s breech- 
loader, and shoot him ! and then, I suppose, 
while she was waiting for the men to come home 
from dinner, and drag out the ugly brute, she sat 
down and opened the piano and played an adagio 
by Schubert ! So we live, as we face westward, — 
seventeen miles a year, as De Tocqueville says ! 

And Hester was just sitting at the piano after 
tea, and was wishing she had brought the Ply- 
mouth Collection with her, — and was trying one 
and another bit of old psalmody, — when the 
familiar signal for stopping the boat was heard, 
and it was announced that they had come to 
Bayou Sara. 

Bayou Sara ! Plow they had heard of Bayou 
Sara in old war days ! Each of them had friends 
in the army who were at Bayou Sara. Hester’s 
own brother was at Bayou Sara. But who Sara 
was or what a Bayou was, neither of them knew 
the more for this. No, Effie Abgar did not 


28 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


know, although Hiram Brinkerhoff had cam- 
paigned at and around Bayou Sara, and had told 
her so. The little bevy of ladies who had assem- 
bled around the piano to listen to Effie’s playing, 
all adjourned to the guards, to see what might be 
the adventures of a stopping a little longer than 
usual. And then for a little they all walked at 
Bayou Sara. 

In old prosperous times, which means before 
the war, the landing was the capital of a large 
and strong planting interest. It is now but a 
forsaken landing-place. As they walked, a won- 
derful sunset was going on ; but they did not 
dare to linger long on shore. As the boat swung 
off again the stern wheel struck a floating log ; 
and two of the arms, with the floats upon them, 
broke off, and floated down the river. This is to 
say that one sixteenth of the paddling power was 
gone, and the whole wheel weakened. While our 
friends were wondering whether this involved 
practically the end of their Red River voyage, 
the captain said to the pilot, “We shall put in 
new side-arms.” Some one asked how long it 
would take to make the repairs. The Captain 
said, “ Oh ! about fifteen minutes.” 

In point of fact the boat’s carpenter and his 
men went steadily to work. It was more than 


OF A PULLMAN. 


129 


fifteen minutes, it was an hour, before the boat 
started again. Then the wheel was as good as 
new. Never was seen a more prompt and effi- 
cient piece of practical engineering. Allowing 
for the time in which they removed the wreck, 
they would have built a new wheel in four or five 
hours. 

After such an adventure as this, the travellers 
looked with more respect on this quiet captain, 
whose place on the boat they would not so well 
have understood, but for some such exhibition of 
his power. Their friend, the pilot, was supreme 
in his department, and the ladies saw most of 
him. The mate, said to be the most amiable of 
men personally, appeared at every landing-place 
as the most vehement, not to say the most pro- 
fane, director of the jolly crew of negroes who 
took the changing cargo on or off. The clerk 
evidently had his set of duties, which were not 
trifles. But if the girls had not seen the captain 
come to the front in some such trial as this of 
the demolished wheel, they would not have 
known what a captain was for. 

A weirdly picturesque sight was the repair of 
the broken wheel. The sunset light failed fast. 
Instantly, almost without orders, one and another 
black man appeared with the long-handled iron 
9 


130 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


baskets, filled with blazing ‘‘light-wood” and 
“pine-knots” which make the torches for all 
night work at the landings. The carpenters hung 
out over the water, working their wonders by 
the lurid flashes of these beacons. What amazed 
Effie and Hester was, that while everybody was 
in haste, nobody was in a hurry. Nobody scolded 
and nobody swore. Nobody half-did any thing. 
When the wheel was finished, it was finished. 
It was as good a wheel as if it had been made 
new at a ship-yard. All this gave them far more 
confidence in their bonny bark and her crew. 

The ladies formed the habit of dressing long 
enough before breakfast to take a little walk on 
the deck above the saloon, by way of appetite. 
The morning haze, over the fresh green of the 
banks, gave a dreamy interest to the whole 
scene. They never tired of such mild adventure 
as a sharp turn in the river, coming back, per- 
haps after three or four miles, to the other side 
of some narrow neck, where was a cabin or a 
peculiar tree which they had seen long before, 
when they passed it on the other side. One 
morning, as they joined the pilot in his lookout, 
they mounted to the high throne reserved for 
visitors, who may look through the glass sides of 
the house, in every direction. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


131 


“And how far have we come in the night?” 
asked Effie. The pilot told her ; and, with the 
science she had already acquired, she expressed 
her surprise that the run had been so short. 

“The captain told me he should be opposite 
Nachitoches before this time.” 

“ But the captain did not tell you, for he did 
not know, of that snag which we were to run 
into.” This was the good-natured answer of the 
good-natured pilot. And in an instant he was 
sorry for it. 

“ Snag ! snag ! ” screamed Hester and Effie. 
Neither had confessed to the other, or to any 
living being else, the terrors which the idea of 
“snags,” whatever snags might be, had inspired. 

Then the pilot expressed his surprise. He 
would not have told them, but he supposed every- 
body on the boat knew of it. It was between 
twelve and one that the boat had struck on a 
snag which was just near enough the water’s 
edge to strike, not projecting far, the pilot 
thought, so it was not easily seen. 

“ Seen ! ” screamed Effie, “ how should any 
thing be seen between twelve o’clock and one in 
the night, with such a mist as this on the river.” 

“ Anyway,” said the good-natured pilot, 
“ William did not see it. I was below,” he ^dded 


132 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


modestly. “Fortunately it did not strike the 
hull, only the after-guard. Look over the rail when 
you go down to breakfast, and you will see where 
it ripped the guard away. We dropped three 
hogsheads of sugar into the river. That will 
sweeten their coffee for them.” 

“ Three of those great hogsheads into that 
muddy river ! What a shame I ” This was Hes- 
ter’s ejaculation. 

But Effie, who had been peering over, said 
“ How far aft was it .? ” And when the pilot told 
her, the ladies both understood that the snag had 
poked its head up, and the sugar had fallen 
through, just below the two state-rooms in which 
they had themselves been sleeping. Only they 
were such good sailors now that they had not 
been wakened — not much wakened. Yes. They 
had waked up. And they had heard voices. 
But each of them had thought it was a landing. 
And they confessed, each to each, that the com- 
fort of feeling no throb of the engine, and of 
sleeping as one sleeps at home, had overcome all 
curiosity. 

And so they had slept, one thin floor from 
death ! They both went down to breakfast, 
solemnized, but not sad or unhappy. 

The people who live on those narrow strips of 


OF A PULLMAN. 


133 


solid land between the upper Red River and the 
swamps behind it, above Nachitoches and below 
Shreveport, call it “the garden of the world.” 
A great many other people call a great many 
other places the garden of the world. Let that 
be as it may, it is no wonder these people call 
this so. The strip is not wide. Sometimes it is 
a few hundred yards, sometimes it is a few miles, 
between the river and the swamps. But, narrow 
or wide, it is as fertile as so much land can be. 
Hardly an inch is wasted in fences. The long 
plantations were carefully cultivated to the very 
edge. And the girls unlearned their prejudices 
as to Southern laziness as they saw the work 
here. Effie asked a young gentleman whom they 
took from one plantation to another, how long 
the cotton planting season was. “ Thirteen 
months in the year,” said he laughing. “That 
is our joke about it. You see the fresh green 
yonder of this year’s crop. These men have not 
been lazy, but you see the mule is trotting round 
in the gin-house yon ; the last year’s crop is not 
yet wholly made. This is not because they have 
been slack. To leave a part of that work till now 
may be in this case good farming.” 

Effie and Hester both remembered the “Raft” 
in their old geography days. It was over this 


134 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Raft that poor Will Harrod fared when he was es- 
caping from the Apaches; — or were they Caman- 
ches ? And what is left of the Raft, and what 
the pilot explained to them, did not disappoint 
them. The history of the Raft can be made out 
clearly enough by any traveller who passes up 
the stream. For there were places in the River 
not as wide as the steamboat was long, so that 
at those points she could not have turned round. 
For twenty miles, indeed, the river never seemed 
three times as wide as at these narrow points. 
If then, in some age, not long after the last 
deluge, maybe, in some ebbing freshet, which 
was bringing down masses of floating trees from 
above, two or three such trees happened to make 
what they call a “ jam ” at such a narrow place ; 
if for two or three hundred years there happened 
to be no eager lumbermen, striving by hook and 
crook, by axe, saw, and crowbar to loosen this 
“ jam,” — why, of course, every new tree that floated 
down the river would pile in behind, but never 
a tree of them all would go down to the Gulf of 
Mexico. This is just what made the Raft. It 
piled up more and more, from year to year. It 
increased perceptibly on its upper end within the 
memory of the present century. At last it 
became in many places a bridge where you could 


OF A PULLMAN. 


135 


walk across. The river would sometimes cut 
around it, would always flow under it. 

So matters lasted till Uncle Sam, in his might, 
had leisure to stop and look at the Raft. It was 
then one hundred and thirty miles long. Uncle 
Sam sent Colonel Shreve with steamboats and 
toothpullers, of various kinds, and bade him abate 
the Raft. This was in 1836. Colonel Shreve 
did as he was bid, and now the river is open 
for hundreds not to say thousands of miles above 
the place where the Raft once closed it to all 
navigation. 

It is hard to say what were the adventures 
of the ever-changing panorama, as the ladies 
watched the shores of the narrow river. Now 
some young gentleman in the pilot house threw a 
“ Harper s Bazar ” ashore to be picked up by the 
admiring group who watched the boat as it went 
by. Who was the “ she ” for whom the “ Bazar ” 
was whirled so deftly ? Now it was a mountain 
of bags of cottofi-seed, which would have stag- 
gered the might of Afrites, which the good- 
natured deck hands had to land under the per- 
suasion of the eager mate. Now three little 
lambs strayed from an intelligent mother in that 
exquisite park where they were grazing, and 
stupidly ran down upon the beach, so to call it, 


1 36 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


below the little bluff. How stupid lambs are ! 
The poor frightened mamma runs along on the 
crests, but cannot tell them to turn round, and 
escape the way they came. How stupid sheep 
are ! Narrower grows the beach and narrower. 
Will they never, never return to their mother ? 
At last one makes a bold venture, and scrambles 
up the bank ! Safe ! Then number two ! Safe 
also ! But here is number three, stupidest of all, 
will dear little number three be drowned ? 

Ah no ! The intelligent pilot, equally interested 
with the ladies, gives one scream from his 
whistle ; and, in an agony of terror, dear little 
number three rushes up the bank to the welcome 
of its mother. 

Dear lamb, there are always friends watching 
us whom we do not know. And the terror most 
terrible, may be a friend in disguise ! 


“ Effie ! Effie ! wake up, Effie ! we are at 
Coshatta ? ” 

This was Hester’s cry to Mrs. Abgar as she took 
her constitutional and regular siesta after dinner. 

“ And what is Coshatta to me, or what am I to 
Coshatta,” said poor sleepy Effie, dazed or dozing 
as you choose, when she emerged at the outward 


OF A PULLMAN. 


37 


door of her state-room. Observe, untravelled 
reader, that each state-room has two doors. You 
step into the saloon, or out upon the guards, ac- 
cording as you go to dinner or to see a landing. 

“Effie Abgar, I am ashamed of you. You 
did not know whether Campt6 was an Indian 
mound or a city, and now you do not know what 
Coshatta is. Yet Coshatta furnishes, let me tell 
you, every year one four-hundredth part of the 
cotton of the world. The chances are, therefore, 
that, as you press your head upon your pillow, 
one two-hundredth part of the cooling surface, is 
from these ports of shipment. I am not wholly 
certain indeed whether you ever heard of Shreve- 
port, the place of our destination. From that 
port one-fortieth of the cotton of the world goes 
in search of its market.” 

So the ladies began to take some interest in 
cotton, and to learn how it was that people ever 
thought cotton was king. Here they took cotton 
seed on board to land it there, where was some 
new plantation. Here was a plantation wholly 
owned and run by new-made freemen. There 
was an old plantation on its mettle to adapt 
itself to the new order. Everywhere was diligent 
care, and, while the boat was at the landing at 
least, vigorous labor. 


1 3 8 WONDERFUL AD VENTURES 


They went creeping up among the cotton 
plantations all day, stopping often. They ex- 
pected to get to Shreveport that night, but the 
fog settled on them so heavily at sundown that 
the friendly captain had to tie the boat to a tree, 
and they must spend one more night on board. 

Not so bad, as the friendly captain said, as his 
mother’s experience. She was forty days coming 
from New Orleans, and only came to the Raft 
then ! 

So in one last social singing party ended their 
last day in “ the garden of the world.” How 
little they had thought that they should ever feel 
at home on the Red River ! But there certainly 
was a homesick feeling about parting from it. 
Here was nice Mrs. Ritshey and her pretty 
daughter, here was poor Miss Harnett, who had 
such a sad limp, but was so patient about it, here 
was the droll little French bride who could not 
understand a word of English, though she were 
Hester’s and Effie’s fellow countrywoman, born 
under the American flag, and under that flag to 
live till she should die. With all of these ladies 
our travellers had come to be intimate. They had 
sung together at night; they had copied each 
other’s patterns ; they had borrowed each other’s 
novels ; they had taken each other’s advice, and 


OF A PULLMAN. 


139 


told each other confidential secrets. And now 
they were to part, and “never, never to see each 
other any more.” 

And here was the nice Norwegian girl who had 
come to regard Effie and Hester as her guardian 
angels, and who had now only two hundred miles 
more to travel before she met her lover, who had 
travelled a thousand miles to meet her. 

They all met for one last good sing before 
going to bed, — French songs, Yankee songs, 
German songs, Texan songs, psalms, and hymns, 
and spiritual songs, and the Norwegian girl con- 
tributed her 


NORWEGIAN SONG. 


Allegretto. 






^ I 'Tl^ 


140 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


My lover sailed away, 

Far, far beyond the sea ; 

But, on the parting day, 

He gave a ring to me ; 

And he said, “ If God should make 
My grave beneath the sea, 

This ring will snap and break, 

For I’ll ne’er come back to thee.” 

He kissed me and was gone 
Far, far beyond the sea ; 

And I am left alone 

For he’s not come back to me. 

I have heard of storm and wrack. 

But his ring is safe with me ; 

So I know he will come back 
To the ring he left, and me. 

And with this pretty omen, if any one had 
understood the Norwegian, the party broke up 
for ever. 

The next morning early they were at Shreve- 
port. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


141 


CHAPTER XII. 

/^UR party was in no hurry. So Effie and 
Hester slept till morning, though the boat 
was at the landing long before. Mrs. Ritshey 
had gone, and the Harnetts had come, met Miss 
Harnett, and had taken her away, and only the 
Norwegian girl and the two friends were left, of 
all last night’s party. There was no Mr. Hay- 
dock, alas ! and no Mr. Brinkerhoff, as at friendly 
Louisville. But they were treated with all the 
honors, the luggage was all ticketed, and they 
evaded all coachmen, and walked with Lisa to 
the hotel where she must wait till the hour for 
her train. 

Then the girls themselves had some hours, 
and these they lounged away as best they might. 
A chance to buy india-rubber and gamboge, and 
court-plaster, and note-paper, and French chalk, 
and hair-pins, and every thing else to make one 
comfortable ! Walking out of town for purposes 


142 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


of sketching proved not so easy. It had rained 
heavily in the night, and the red mud of Shreve- 
port was as tenacious potter’s clay mixed in with 
Upton’s glue, when the same has been well made 
by King. When they first crossed a street, Effie’s 
overshoe was drawn off, as if some underground 
bull-dog had bitten it. It was only recovered by 
a resolute double-handed pull by Hester, and 
“ that day they crossed no more ” — streets. They 
retired to the station-house, made their sketches 
there, and with a paint-knife cut off the mud 
which still clung to the overshoe. 

And then, early in the forenoon, the train. 
Not yet the Pullman, eager reader! At first 
only a comfortable airy car — but, oh, the luxury 
of seeing rolling hills and valleys again I Hardly 
hills. No, not high hills — but woods and slopes 
a little like home — and something not quite flat. 
So they came to Marshall, and here, after dinner, 
swept along the imperial “ through train,” ready 
to pick up such insignificant loiterers on branches. 
How ashamed the people who had not been run- 
ning on express time were expected to feel 1 

But they were not ashamed. Effie gathered 
up the “ Gray’s Botany,” the Official Guide and 
the Racine, her shawl-strap, her umbrella, her 
water-proof and her hand-bag, and with two 


OF A PULLMAN. 


143 


hands carried them, and at the same moment 
held up her skirts. Hester picked up her Black’s 
“ Phaeton,” Effie’s sketch-book, her own portfolio, 
in which, when the train came, she was writing 
just a line to Mr. Haydock ; she took also her 
cloak, her india-rubbers which she had not time 
to put on, and her carpet-bag, in her two hands. 
A cheerful black boy followed with their other 
“ traps,” and so they crossed to the platform of 
the imperial through train. Here stood a person 
who seemed not quite a stranger. “ Here’s your 
drawing-room car ! Drawing-room car, madam ! ” 
And then he smiled a broader grin than before. 
Effie gave him her traps and mounted the steps 
of the Palace, not recognizing. Hester had a 
moment more to look on him. It was Aurelius, 
their own porter, who had left Jersey City with 
them — how long ago it seemed ! And the 
Palace — it was their own dear Golconda ! 

“ Home again, home again, from a foreign shore.” 

And they passed directly to “ six and seven,” 
and bade Aurelius put their “things” there, and 
sank into their old seats, after all their strange 
and eventful wanderings, with a delight which 
none can know but monarchs who have returned 
to the serene splendors of their own homes. 

Do not ask me how the “Golconda” came 


144 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


there. I do not know, nor did Aurelius know. 
Some hot box on the Iron Mountain Road above 
had disabled the “Siberia,” and the “Golconda” 
had been substituted. And Aurelius, like the 
faithful lackeys of all palaces, had gone where his 
dynasty had gone, and was a Texan to-day as he 
had been a Jersey man four days before. 

And in more senses than one Hester and Effie 
felt at home. The country of Eastern Texas, 
where they now were, is not the rich and fertile 
region of which Texas boasts most. But these 
ladies had seen their fill, for the moment, of fer- 
tile lands. And what pleased them here, was 
that as one rode, this looked like the woodlands 
of Eastern Massachusetts, or of unmountainous 
Rhode Island. Of course the flora differs, but a 
pine is a pine, and though the skilful Hester knew 
and the keen-sighted Eflie perceived that these 
pines were not their pines, still they were glad 
that they were pines at all. There were rolling 
hills, and railroad cuts enough to keep up the 
general resemblance. 

It was no such country that the torrent of emi- 
grants had come to see, and they were sweeping 
on further. The existence of the Palace car in 
such regions makes all other cars “ second-class ” 
and a wild enough look, unkempt and untidy 


OF A PULLMAN. 


145 


have the body of passengers in them. They 
have slept in these seats, perhaps they have 
eaten in them, and have drank in them, and have 
made in them such toilets as they make. And 
they are of every country that emerged from 
Babel. Chinaman, black man, red man, Hun- 
garian, Austrian, Prussian, Frenchman, Spaniard, 
Englishman, Scotchman, Welshman and Irish- 
man, Jews and Proselytes, Cretes and Arabians, 
might all meet in one of these emigrant trains. 
The ladies would visit them sometimes to carry an 
orange or a banana to some of the tired children. 
And they were learning, all the time, how true it 
is that their own country is one out of many. 

It will never do to try to follow along their 
diaries, with their vain and vague attempts to 
sleep off wheels at night, that as they rode they 
might see spring-time, the first real spring-time 
they had ever seen, in beautiful Texas, — where, if 
anywhere, spring is spring. The trouble of all 
such steps, in the Western system of travel, is 
this. There is but one fast train a day. That is, 
there is but one “lightning express.” What is 
called a “fast train” on the schedule, may, very 
probably, be the slowest train of all. If then, 
you leave the lightning express at iih. 55' to- 
day, it will be to take it again at iih. 56' to* 


10 


146 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


morrow, or any subsequent day for the next year 
that you may choose. If you take another train, 
at another hour, it is, most likely, only to be over- 
taken by the lightning train before twenty-four 
hours have gone. And you must sacrifice your 
Palace if you cease to ride on the lightning. 

For all that, and for all that, the two travellers 
did alight at Hearne. Do you remember in the 
old geographies “Arctic Ocean, seen by Mr. 
Hearne.?” He must have been another Heame 
than this Hearne. This unknown Hearne has 
given his name to a place where the H. & T. C. 
crosses the I. and G. N. ; and, if you do not know 
what that means, it is not my fault, but the crime 
of the teacher who taught you geography. And 
here, on a level prairie, is a station-house, which 
is what people there call a hotel, what in old 
Yankee times, men would have called a tavern, 
and there are the other accessories of a junction. 

And here, on a lovely morning, the girls took 
their lives in their hands, and also took the bot- 
any books, and the sketch-books, and the colors, 
and walked into the Infinite. You cannot do 
this long when you start from a beach, because 
you find the water cold, and you must come back 
to the Finite. On a prairie you can keep on 
longer. Fences were left at once. Tracks of 


OF A PULLMAN. 


147 


cows vanished soon. And then blazes of yellow 
flowers, flushes of pink flowers, blue streaks of 
flowers unnamed, all lapped in the eternal emerald 
green. Not without clumps of trees, oh, ignorant 
Yankee ! and in such a clump the girls encamped, 
and took out the paints, and blotched in pink 
madder, and rose madder, and Naples yellow, and 
all the yellows, and tried all the greens and 
purples, and indeed all the colors of the prism, 
in the hope to carry something home of the glories 
of a prairie in spring. Such a morning ! Think 
how they would never have known what they 
lost had they not spent that morning in Hearne! 

Just a word here for the clean napkins, and 
bright spoons, and crisp radishes, and thought- 
ful table service of their dinner there ! But we 
must not stop — no, not for dinners or for flowers. 
On and on, on and on, till we are waked our 
second morning as a chattering Englishman 
wakes his wife in 8 and 9, saying that “ It’s very 
like a park at home, my dear.” 

“ I don’t want to live here ! ” was her wretched 
groan in reply. 

But perhaps she changed her mind afterwards. 


For Effie and for Hester — though half Hes- 
ter’s heart was in St. Auguste — Austin had a 


148 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


thousand charms. No ! nobody could call that 
hotel a palace, though Austin is the capital of an 
empire. But the friends who took care of them, 
the pretty homes, the lovely gardens, the charm- 
ing drives, made them forget the hotel, which in- 
deed, from morning to night, they hardly saw. 
What fate had bent them to go to San Antonio ^ 
Why not find some quiet lodging here, a little 
out of the streets of Austin, and nestle down for 
the spring-time, the sketching, the painting, for 
the rest which they had been madly pursuing so 
long.-* Just as at Arcadie, it seemed so stupid to 
go farther. At Austin it seemed as if they had 
all they asked for when they left home. 

All Austin was crazy about the choice of a 
United States Senator. Not that anybody seemed 
to care much about United States politics. But 
here was an honorable post, for six years, to be 
given to some one who deserved well of his 
country. ‘‘Ah, Mrs. Abgar,” said a gentleman 
to Effie, “ ten years hence you will not have to 
trouble yourselves who shall be your president. 
We will choose him for you in Texas ! ” 

•In truth the population of the Empire of Texas 
doubles every five years. In 1870, it was eight 
hundred thousand ; in 1875, they say it was one 
million six hundred thousand. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


149 


The hotel parlor brought together all the 
nationalities of the world again, as different 
people, of rather higher social grade than the 
girls had seen on the trains, were making their 
arrangements for new homes. What a reper- 
toire of music that piano repeats as the year 
goes by ! 

Here were the English family, whom the wait- 
ers would call the Member of Parliament ; here 
were some Italians, from Memphis, strange to 
say, not from Genoa ; here were gentlemen and 
ladies from the ends of the earth. And the scrap 
which Effie wrote down, her last night in Austin, 
was not a camp-meeting song, nor a ballad of the 
Brazos, but a little air of Verdi’s. All the same, 
he who sang was an American born, while he 
sang in the only language he had ever heard at 
home. 


cun uriu. 


^ r - 

f? ^ If \j \j y r r r r 

a r 

^ 7 ^ K k' ■■ 1 1 / 1 / / j 

tJ 

SM-L 


La donna & mo-bi-le qual piuma al ven - to, 



mu-ta d’ac - cen - to e di - pen - sie - ro. Sempre un a« 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


150 
















' chi a lei s’af-fi - da chi le con - fi - - da mal canto il 



'=f^ 


V— ^ 




Pur mai non sente - si fe-lice ap - pie - no 


CO - re ! 


OF A PULLMAN. 


15 



chi su quel se - no non liba a mo - re ! La donna h 






f^— #— r 

_i — — 





g- ■ ■ 



mo - bil qual piuma al ven - to mu - ta d’ac - cen - to 



Woman is changeable ! 

Light as a feather, — 

False as fair weather. 

Who can believe her ? 

Always a beautiful face so beguiling, 
Weeping or smiling, 

Yet a deceiver ! 

Woman ah woman ! 

Light as a feather ! 

False as fair weather, 

Who can believe ? 


152 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Oh, it is misery ! 
Fondly confiding ! 
Tamely abiding 
Her fickle fancies, 
Always felicity 
Mocks the pursuer, 
Whom as her wooer 
Love ne’er entrances. 

Woman ah woman ! 
Light as a feather ! 
False as fair weather, 
Who can believe ? 


OF A PULLMAN. 


53 


CHAPTER XIII. 

"F^LEASE to observe that, in distance, from 
Shreveport to Austin these ladies had 
travelled about four hundred miles, say as much 
as the width of France from the Bay of Biscay 
to Switzerland. But they had not crossed half of 
the Empire of Texas, for Texas is an Empire ; 
and, by the way, be it said, she knows she is. 

Who were these ladies then that they should 
stay, even in the prettiest garden in Austin, or 
waste a month on its pleasantest verandah, and 
go home to confess that they had not gone half 
across Texas. They must see some Mexicans ! 
They must know a ranchero by sight ! They 
must walk and talk Spanish. 

For San Antonio they had started, and to San 
Antonio they would go. They would show they 
were not women to be turned about by every 
word of friendship. 

“ ‘ The zeal that drove them from their native home 
Shall drive them gadding round the world to roam.’ ” 

said the wretched Effie, parodying Dryden, as 


154 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


she packed a pot of sensitive plants in a safe 
place among her spring bonnets and laces in the 
agony of the late Sunday night before they 
started across the prairies. That kind Judge 
Treadwell who had done every thing for them so 
carefully had engaged an ambulance and a driver 
who was to take them to San Antonio. “ If the 
man were my own brother, Mrs. Abgar, I could 
not trust him more implicitly than I trust Dustin. 
I have sent Mrs. Treadwell and the children with 
him over the prairies a hundred times. I do so 
wish I could go with you ! ” So they were really 
to go in “ an ambulance.” 

“ Any thing, my dear Effie,” said Hester, so 
it be not a stage-coach.” 

For since Hester’s wretched failure in taking 
care of herself on this great party, she had sub- 
sided ignominiously, and she was no longer the 
chief of the expedition. Effie made all the 
arrangements now. The pretence that either 
knew an inch of the geography had been long 
since abandoned. 

At half-past seven an eager waiter at Hester’s 
door announced that the “ ambyourlance ” had 
come. Hester flung the door open, bade him 
strap her trunk and take it down, gathered i, 2, 
3, 4, and took them herself, fairly ashamed of her 


OF A PULLMAN. 


55 


own eagerness to see what manner of machine an 
ambulance might be. 

She found simply a long canvas-topped wagon, 
lightly sprung — such as she had ridden in, on the 
White Mountains, twenty times, and had never 
heard called an ambulance before. There were 
but two seats in it, where there might have been 
three ; but, as the party was so small, the middle 
seat had been taken away to make the more room 
for the luggage. Half amused and half provoked 
with herself, she turned to meet Effie and see if 
she would confess to any surprise. 

“ Is this an ambulance } I supposed there 
would be a bed in it, and that I should lie in it all 
day, and you sit by my side in the costume 
of Florence Nightingale to feed me with pare- 
goric.” 

A little crest-fallen, they hurried through the 
last breakfast at Austin, and then, to the relief 
of the good-natured Dustin, the tall Pennsyl- 
vanian to whose escort they were entrusted, they 
mounted their chariot and were away. 

A lovely morning ! “ Why, it is really May-day, 
Hester, of all the days in the year ! ” The air 
fresh and even bracing, the sun just clouded 
without the slightest risk of rain. Dust laid; who 
shall say how } since no rain had fallen for weeks. 


156 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Light hearts, light freight, a cheerful driver, and 
a good team, who could ask for a better way to 
spend May-day ? 

Effie’s first chance for a sketch — and that only 
the barest suggestion of values and of groups — 
was as you leave the city at the ford of the Colo- 
rado. When the river chooses to rise, and no- 
body knows when that will be, it is twenty-three 
hundred feet wide. On this May-day it was per- 
haps sixty yards across. The horses were to be 
watered before crossing it, and at that moment a 
drove of beautiful cattle, a drove to fill Rosa Bon- 
heur, nay Juno herself, with rapture, chose to file 
across the river at just middle distance from 
them, so prettily grouped, and the varied figures 
standing out so well against the water and the 
distant sky-line ! Then the ambulance was to 
ford as soon as the “ stage ” had gone by. Neither 
of the girls had ever forded a river. At the bot- 
tom of each heart was sober certainty that they 
should be swept into the Gulf of Mexico. But 
each was ashamed to tell the other, and as in 
truth there was no danger nor shadow of danger, 
they could enjoy the wonderful picture all the 
way. A hard pull across the dry river-bed and 
then began the wonders of eighty miles’ drive 
through a park of matchless beauty. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


57 


Yes, everybody says “An English park!” like 
the sturdy Englishman to his berth- dozed wife 
in the Pullman. High praise, to our English 
friends. Twenty years ago Robin said of these 
prairies, “ Like a park ; ” good Mr. Flint keeps 
saying, “You would think you were in a park.” 
That clever English woman, thirty years after, 
says “It is all like a park.” And as the girls 
dipped into Mr. Olmsted’s Texas from time to 
time they could not but ask whether inspirations 
from these Texan parks had not stolen since into 
the masterpieces of his success. 

The road was perfect. It would not have been 
so after rain. But now the most sensitive critic 
could not ask any thing better. Sometimes it was 
fenced in, much more often not. Almost never 
was it exactly level, not once so steep but that 
the horses kept the even tenor of their trot. 

“ Oh, Effie 1 look here.” “ Hester, do look 
there.” “ See that distance ; would you not be 
certain it was the sea } ” “ Was ever any thing 

grouped like those trees } ” “ Had you any idea 

that a prairie was so beautiful .?” “Do you sup- 
pose this is a bona fide prairie } there are so many 
trees.” And so on, and so on. 

And then the flowers ! May-day indeed. Hes- 
ter had been in Switzerland at the end of June, 


58 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


years on years before, and often had she raptured 
to Effie about the day’s ride, in which they col- 
lected a hundred varieties of flowers, most of 
them new to them. Here was the same experi- 
ence in a new form. And these were not horrid 
coarse things, as peaple say prairie flowers are. 
Any one of the succession of the nosegays which 
Tom Dustin gathered for them, or which for 
themselves the girls gathered in one or another 
irrepressible escape from the carriage, would 
have been a beauty and a joy in any competition 
with any collection. Mistress botanist Hester, 
prime botanist extraordinary to the expedition, 
was beside herself for names, and the well-bat- 
tered '‘Gray” lying in the bottom of the wagon 
proved of more use to press things in, which 
were to be sent home to Letitia to soak out in 
water and analyze, than for a guide in nomencla- 
ture. The “Gray” stood bold to its determina- 
tion to pass no limit “south of Kentucky and 
Virginia.” 

“He won’t pass it,” said Effle, proudly, “but 
we have.” 

This list may well be compared with the lists 
of Swiss travel. Dividing by old Ransom’s floral 
system, in which there were nine classes of 
flowers based on the several tints of the rainbow, 
there were, to use his language : 


OF A PULLMAN, 


159 


1. “Them as bears the white blossom.” In 
this class was the original Eupatorium of Ran- 
som, and two or three other varieties ! Be it 
said to the unlearned that when a botanical 
writer wants to say he has seen a thing himself, 
he marks it with the mark of exclamation (!), and 
when he doubts the remark of another he ap- 
pends an interrogation (i*). The girls, as they 
made their list, when Dustin was watering or at 
other writing spots, delighted in the immense 
ejaculations which lighted it up. 

It went on. 

2. “ Them as bears the violet blossom.” 

“ Is magenta violet t “ No, child, magenta is 
red. Are you color blind ” “ Then I shall put 

in purple lupine and false lupine here.” “ Put in 
what you choose. You already see the radical 
error of Ransom’s system.” But down went the 
two lupines with two marks of wonder ! ! And 
purple verbenas, of which there were acres on 
acres of color, had to come in here. 

3. “ Them as bears the indigo blossom.” 

Hester was blank here. She had only two or 

three vile hyssops which she could have gathered 
in any barnyard. But when they came to 

4. “ Them as bears the blue blossom,” she put 
down lupines and blue verbenas. “ What is that 


l 60 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


about that Horticultural Society which offered a 
prize for blue verbenas ? Was it all humbug ; or 
why did not somebody come here and win the 
sordid dross ? Here I must put in many sur- 
prise marks to show my scorn of the older ob- 
server.” 

But these things were only preliminary. “ Blue 
flowers ? ” said Hester, “ I always distrusted blue 
flowers. My verbenas at home always had a 
passion for running into the class of purples, 
though I never got the prize.” It was not till she 
came to her reds that she ran rampant. 

This magenta blossom which she wanted to 
put in first, which the maidens of the region call 
“wild Hollyhock,” the painted cup — only red 
reminiscence of New England — the Star of 
Texas, an exquisitely cut flower of very delicate 
pink, these were alone enough to give dignity to 
class No. 5 of the Ransomic system. So different 
from lands where the ruling color is yellow on 
grass ! 

But, when the girls had come to “ Class No. 5,” 
their classification ended in their first reasonable 
access of terror. 

Judge Treadwell had not told them that, ten 
days before, the mail-coach had been attacked by 
highwaymen, and all their watches and money 
taken from the passengers. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


l6l 


Rut this was really the reason why he had en- 
trusted them to Dustin and an ambulance. The 
“ private team ” is safer because nobody knows it 
is coming. 

Effie had seen on a hand-bill in the post-office 
offering a “ reward ” that the mail had been 
robbed. But she had not mentioned it to Hester. 

Hester had seen the same “ Reward ” offered 
in a Galveston newspaper. But she had not 
shown it to Effie, and had torn the paper to bits 
lest she should see it. 

Dustin was no more anxious about the matter 
than he was at the danger of a thunderbolt 
because he had heard of thunderbolts. But he 
had too much sense to speak of it to the ladies. 

All the same, however, when, as he gathered 
up his reins after watering the horses, looking 
back on the Eastern horizon, he saw two men, 
perhaps two miles away, pressing their horses 
towards him on a hard gallop, Dustin stepped 
back into the ambulance rather too hastily. And 
he gave the horses rather an untimely and un- 
gracious cut. For Dustin meant to push them 
beyond the strip of wood-land which they were 
entering before these horsemen overhauled him. 

It was in this very strip of wood-land that the 
mail had been overhauled. 


II 


i 62 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


The sun was now setting, as far as ever in ad- 
vance of them, though they had travelled towards 
him so long. 

The accent of Dustin’s cry to his team was 
unfortunate. 

Hester, more nervous than usual, perhaps, 
caught the alarm. She had noticed his look back 
and the sudden change of his manner. She 
thrust her body out of the carriage, looked back, 
and saw the horsemen against the eastern sky. 

“ It is the robbers ! It is the robbers ! ” she 
sobbed, as she fell back. 

And Dustin did not say her no. But he “ cut” 
the horses again with that same merciless lash 
which the ladies had never seen before. 

Effie Abgar thrust her body out on her side. 
She saw the two horsemen also. 

She said no word. But she detached her 
watch and chain, she wrapped them in her hand- 
kerchief with her purse, and she crowded the 
whole into the bottom of the bag of corn which 
Dustin had for his horses. She bade Hester do 
the same with hers. 

A stern chase is a long chase. And the two 
bays understood what was expected. The road 
was rougher in that thicket than in the open 
prairie. But the ambulance held together, even 


OF A PULLMAN. 


163 


though it sprang wildly from side to side, and 
sometimes toppled fearfully as if it would go 
over. 

Dustin only spoke to his “ cattle.” And the 
girls said no word to each other or to him. 

But they knew what he thought the exigency 
when they saw the horses break into that wild 
run from the quick trot before, unchecked by 
him. 

Up a little slope — round a curve in the timber. 
Then Dustin spoke, — 

“ When we have rounded yon oak, mum, we 
shall be in sight of Tremlett’s, and all’s well.” 

But yon oak was fearfully far away ! They had 
not reached it, no, nor half reached it, when they 
could hear horses’ hoofs behind them. 

Then they could hear voices, “ Hold up ! Hold 
up ! Tom Dustin, hold up ! ” 

But Tom Dustin this time really swore at his 
horses, though he had never been known to be 
profane before, and cut more unmercifully than 
ever. 

“ Rat, tat, tat : rat, tat, tat ” — how fearfully 
near the hoofs came ! 

And at last, though the road was narrow, a 
white horse dashed by them. 

“ Will you hold up, I say ? ” 


1 64 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


CHAPTER XIV. 

TN all narratives of adventure, there is, at the 
crisis, one satisfaction for the reader ; viz., 
that he can judge by the mere number of pages 
between him and the end of the book, whether 
there be any thing more to tell. Whether a given 
earthquake engulfed all the persons of whom 
the book has treated, or only one half of them, or 
possibly only one quarter, may be roughly deter- 
mined by the rule of three. And thus, most 
skilful readers are aware, that in the real tug and 
throe of a book, when the “ Alert ” is pinched hard- 
est in the floe ; or when nineteen lions, with mouths 
open, are ranged in a circle around Captain Cum- 
ming and his two discouraged naked Mnoongsa 
guides, — most readers, I say, are aware, that to 
themselves, “ about one quarter of this book is 
yet unread, therefore about one quarter of the 
people in it still live.” To persons who begin at 
the last chapter, and read backward, this calcula- 
tion is unnecessary. But their system is so 


OF A PULLMAN. 


165 


destructive, so injurious to all effects, whether of 
poetical justice as wrought out in nature and in 
fact, or of the deftly devised plot even of the most 
skilful novelist, that it is justly condemned in all 
courts of literary justice, where authors are the 
arbiters. The true formula, as has been said, for 
discovering the exact annihilating power of any 
earthquake, epidemic, hari-kari, rise of a tidal 
wave, undrained village street, collision of trains, 
or, as in our little book, an attack of banditti, 
will be found in the following equation : 

nc — pc 
X = L— 

P 

Where x represents the number of survivors 
after the crisis, c the whole number of characters, 
p the number of pages read, and n the number 
of pages in all. 

It is only when Messrs. Longman or Messrs. 
Roberts pad the end of the book with thick ad- 
vertising sheets, that the average reader is misled 
by this formula. And this custom is so annoy- 
ing, that in Sybaris, and in the Young Com- 
panions’ Country, the custom of Utopia is still 
maintained, where, by statute, publishers were 
compelled to put the advertising sheets at the 
beginning of the volume. 

In the case of the little adventure with which 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


1 66 


our last chapter closed, the purposes of melo- 
drama would have been better accomplished had 
the brigands succeeded in rifling the purses of 
the ladies and taking their watches. In very 
fact, only ten days before, two men on this 
same road, took nine watches from nine stage- 
travellers, two of whom were officers in the 
United States army ; and, about ten days after, 
a similar event took place on the Southern road 
to San Antonio. If, at that point, Fred Hay- 
dock and Mr. Hiram Brinkerhoff had started 
out from a thicket, had killed two banditti with 
revolvers, and slain two by the edge of the sword, 
escaping themselves miraculously with only a 
slight flesh-wound in Fred Haydock’s left arm, 
which Hester herself were permitted to band- 
age, this little story would have had just the 
element of romance which, alas, it has not ; and 
these remaining pages would have had just 
enough of blood, of arnica, and of the Extract of 
Hamamelis to give them interest in the eyes of 
the general reader. 

But, really, this was not what happened. So 
soon as Dustin saw the white horse pass him, he 
knew the game was up. He sulkily drew up his 
own beasts, and even swore at them because 
they did not stop as sharply as he wished them 
to do. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


167 


The other rider, on a bay horse speckled with 
the frothing of his own running, passed on the 
other side. 

The two girls sat back in the ambulance with 
no feeling of terror now. Effie was conscious of 
the simple feeling of amusement, and Hester’s 
was crude curiosity. “ What would happen 
next ” 

What happened was, that the bay horse was 
checked most easily, and his rider turned him. 

It was Hiram Brinkerhoff who said, “ I hope 
we did not frighten you.” And then as he saw 
that the party had been frightened, he was abject 
and eager in his mortified apologies. But really 
the young men were not so much to blame. 
They had arrived in Austin only that morning. 
All their time there was spent in tracing the 
ladies, and they had been on one or two false 
trails. They had known nothing of mail rob- 
bers, and were both of them, sooth to say, so 
ignorant of Texas and its customs that they 
thought of such things as little as they would 
have done in East Orange or in North New 
Milan. As they dashed after the ambulance they 
were only afraid that some drunken driver had 
these two ladies in his care. 

Poor Tom Dustin ! 


l68 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


No, Lily ! No, Emma ! The measurement of the 
Town and Country series is pitiless, is remorse- 
less. There must be no space wasted in these 
pages on what Fred Haydock did or did not say 
to the two ladies as he walked by the side of the 
carriage, while his horse followed meekly, and 
the cortege went down to Tremlett’s. For of 
course with Hiram Brinkerhoff was Fred Hay- 
dock. Of course the one had seen his corre- 
spondents in New Orleans, in Baton Rouge, in 
Nachitoches, and had then hurried to Austin to 
meet his appointment with Fred. Of course the 
other had wound up all the government business 
in St. Auguste, and had hurried by Galveston to 
Austin to meet his appointment with Hiram. 
Hester Sutphen had unfortunately missed the 
telegram which begged her to wait till they 
came. So was it that while the girls going out 
from Austin were fording the Colorado, the two 
gentlemen were entering Austin in seats six and 
seven of the “ Golconda.” 

Then, as has been said, they were on a false 
trail at first. None the less did they mount 
themselves well at Austin and went in pursuit, 
with what fatal success the reader has seen. 

The ladies were forgiving, more forgiving 
perhaps than the gentlemen deserved. With 


OF A PULLMAN. 


169 


much laughter the watches were disinterred 
from the bags of corn. On a sober walk all the 
steeds came up to Tremlett’s. The people at 
Tremlett’s were amazed to see Tom Dustin’s 
team come in, in such a lather. But their curi- 
osity was not appeased at first, and the young 
ladies were at once received, in the simple kind- 
ness of the hospitality of a wayside inn in Texas, 
to the cold water and other refreshment which 
should restore them from the terrors of the last 
hurried mile. 

In the “ gallery ” hung a pail of water, because 
in a country where ice is unknown in May, the 
best chances for keeping water cool come, by 
maintaining for it a steady evaporation on every 
side. The gentlemen dipped from the pail, and 
made their ablutions there. Hiram even had a 
chance to open his ready sketch-book, and by 
one or two tints to give some of the effects of 
the sunset, when they were all summoned to- 
gether to supper. 

They found that they were not the only trav- 
ellers. From one and another point different 
people assembled, and it proved that an extra 
stage had “ put up ” for the night, and that some 
wayfarers in pursuit of lost horses were here. 
The meal was served in a rough ell behind the 


170 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


house ; and the several guests — some in their 
shirt sleeves, some in more full costume — gath- 
ered silently at the long table. 

No one spoke. And, in a moment, the reason 
was apparent, as Tremlett, the innkeeper, at the 
head of the board bowed, and in simple language 
asked a blessing. 

“Talk about godless Texas,” said Hiram, 
afterwards, as he and Fred went to look after 
their horses’ cheer. “ It is the only region where 
I have ever travelled, where an inn-keeper asks 
a blessing, before his guests fall to.” 

A beautiful moon had come up while they were 
at supper. The air was clear as in a winter 
night in New England. The ladies sat a little 
while on the gallery, but then owned they were 
tired, and bade good-night, led away under Mrs. 
Tremlett’s watchful care to see what manner of 
contrivances Mrs. Tremlett’s beds might be. 
As the gqod lady lighted her “ dip,” she turned 
kindly to Hester, and said, inquiringly : 

“ You’re from the East, my dear } ” 

Hester said she was. 

“From Chicago.?” continued Mrs. Tremlett. 

“ Oh ! farther than Chicago,” said Hester, 
laughing. 

“ From New York .? ” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


171 


“Oh! farther than New York. I am from 
Boston I ” 

“ From Boston, be you,” said the good lady, 
indeed surprised. “Then you speak French!” 
And so the mystery of Hester’s and Effie’s bad 
English and foreign accent were accounted for. 
This was not the only time in Texas when they 
found that their beloved “ hub of the universe ” 
was rated as in a foreign land. 

Meanwhile, on the “ gallery ” gathered the 
different men-folk, travellers, or of the house- 
hold, and as the number became too many for 
the chairs, one and another threw himself on the 
ground in front, basking, so to speak, in the full 
light of the good-natured moon. 

“In my country,” said Hiram, “I should hardly 
dare to sit out in the evening air, as we are sit- 
ting now, though it were the middle of August. 
And this is only the first day of May.” 

* One of the young Texans replied that there 
had not been five nights since New-year when 
he would not willingly have slept on the ground 
there, wrapped in a blanket, so little risk was 
there from the dews. 

“ No dews, and no rain,” said Hiram, “ then 
what is it which keeps the prairies green .? ” 

But this was what no one could well telL 


1/2 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


They said it was three months since there had 
been any rain-fall of consequence. Indeed, they 
said their springs were low and their crops 
suffering. Yet, as the travellers had seen, the 
prairies were as green as a mowing lot in 
Massachusetts would be a month later in the 
year. 

All that anybody could say was, that the roots 
of the prairie grass were very long. This mes- 
quit grass, for instance, which is such a blessing 
to man and beast, throws down its root three feet 
below the surface. 

And then, in the midst of this geoponic lore, 
a long wagon drove by, with extemporized seats 
for eight or ten people, and they sang as they 
rode. 



— 

1 


f f f f r 


wr\\^ V y 1 r r r T 

y y \ 1 




•^1^1 1 

No - bod-y knows the trouble I’ve had, . 

No - bod-y knows but 


iH 



— ^--d~~r 


1 h 1 ^ 


f T f f * ~ 


1 1 r Vj 

^ y \ 1 r - 

4: 

— I 

qdzzi n=v_ 



Je - sus. No-bod-y knows the trou-ble I’ve had, 




IT 

TJ 

T r — r — 


lb II* I* 

yr? r* * 


II- 

IT 


r • 

• 1 

y y - 


]} ^ L_ 

4-— •- 




Glo - ry, hal - le - lu! 


felt the bur - den of 


OF A PULLMAN. 


173 



“ They are going home from the camp-meeting 
at the corners/’ said Tremlett in explanation. 
One and another of the singers waved a hand as 
they went by. But the carriage did not stop. As 
it receded upon the prairie, successive verses of 
the song could be heard, less and less distinct, 
as the distance increased. 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had, 

Nobody knows but Jesus. 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had, 

Glory, hallelu ! 

I fell on the ground and I kissed his feet, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
And he lifted me up with his smile so sweet. Oh, yes. Lord ! 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had, 

Nobody knows but Jesus. 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had. 

Glory, hallelu ! 

I took his hand and I held it fast, Oh, yes, Lord ! 

And I will hold it to the last. Oh, yes, Lord ! 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had, 

Nobody knows but Jesus. 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had, 

Glory, hallelu ! 


74 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


I took his crown when his temples bled, Oh, yes, Lord ! 
For I heard the gracious words he said, Oh, yes. Lord ! 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had, 

Nobody knows but Jesus. 

Nobody knows the trouble I’ve had. 

Glory, hallelu ! 

Oh, take my burden, and bear my yoke. Oh, yes. Lord ! 
These were the gracious words he spoke. Oh, yes. Lord ! 

And, after this, it was impossible to follow the 
verses. 

The young gentlemen took the song as a con- 
secration of to-night, and broke up the little bi- 
vouac to try the comforts, hardly so attractive, of 
Mrs. Tremlett’s bedrooms. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


175 


CHAPTER XV. 

"\^7HEN morning came, it proved that a 
’ “Norther” had struck them in the 
night. But it was a very gentle “ Norther ” 
compared with what they had all read about in 
Mr. Olmsted’s book, and in the adventures of 
Phil Nolan’s friends, which, just at this moment 
was working along in Scribner’s Magazine. All 
the hurt it had done anybody was, that every- 
body had wakened at four o’clock, and had pulled 
up his bedquilt. Blankets appeared to be un- 
known at the Tremlett’s. But, in a cotton-grow- 
ing country, quilts are quite as thick as any 
traveller will require. 

When breakfast was ended, and the ambu- 
lance came round, it proved that Fred Haydock 
had bought a side-saddle from Tremlett ; that 
Fred’s own saddle was fastened behind the am- 
bulance. So Hester very prettily yielded to 
Fred’s eager request that for the first *hour she 
would ride on horseback with him. 


176 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


Was not it kind in Hiram Brinkerhoff to let 
her take his horse, while he jolted in the am- 
bulance ? 

And Fred and Hester were able to go back to 
that first ride, so long ago, in the darkness of 
Arcadie ! 

Then, after an hour, they took the ambulance 
and Eflfie and Hiram rode in their turn. Just as 
they mounted, Dustin pointed to the southwest- 
ern horizon. 

‘‘ A drove of cattle, Mrs. Abgar.” 

And over the slope, three or four miles away, 
Effie made out a long line of ants creeping in 
line of battle. 

But in half an hour the travellers had neared 
the ants and the ants the travellers. The ants 
were an army, half a mile from flank to flank, of 
beautiful cattle. Oh, how Juno, or Minerva, or 
Aphrodite would have quarrelled for those white 
ones ! Black, white, red, brown, gray, mauve, 
ashes of roses, salmon color, pink, mottled and 
pied — no two oxen alike — but all with a look 
not so strange, both of gentleness and vigor. 
They plodded amiably along; they cropped the 
grass as if they had been pet lambs, or, if they 
had loitered too long, they galloped when they 
were touched up by impatient drivers. 


OF A PULLMAN, 


177 


The drivers — wild bandit-looking men, with 
Mexican hats, and queer buckskin leggings — 
rode from end to end of the troop, almost at 
right angles with its line of march to be sure 
that no ox strayed behind. And so, in solemn 
procession, the twenty hecatombs of oxen were 
to march a thousand miles, from day to day, till 
they should ascend, not a sacrificial altar, but 
the trains of cars which should bear them to 
distant Brighton. 

“You might tie a letter for your husband on 
the horn of that lovely white one, and he might 
find it at his butcher’s, if he were romantic 
enough to ask for Texan beef.” 

So said Hiram Brinkerhoff, laughing. But 
even in the motion of the horses he could see 
that Mrs. Abgar started. What had he said } 
She asked him, — coldly was it } — or with 
what tone.^ — 

“ I do not understand you.” 

“ I say,” said Hiram, red in the face, “that you 
could make the cattle your mail-carriers to your 
husband — to Mr. Abgar.” 

“ Why, Mr. Brinkerhoff, I beg your pardon ; it 
is all over now, but you surprised me. My hus- 
band has been in heaven many years. I never 
had a husband but for one happy month. Peo- 


12 


178 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


pie say it was too happy, but I do not think so.” 
And she smiled with that beautiful sad smile. 

Hiram Brinkerhoff was still crimsoned. “ Dear 
Mrs. Abgar, pardon me. You know! I am sure 
you know I would not have pained you. But I — 
Well I — You do not see I — But you have spoken 
so much of Mr. Abgar, of Phil, you call him — I 
supposed — Mr. Haydock supposed — ” 

“ Dear old Phil I yes,” said Mrs. Abgar, her 
face not losing its sweetness. “ Where should 
I have been but for him } He is my husband’s 
older brother. But dear old Phil has a very 
charming wife of his own, and such lovely chil- 
dren 1 I thought I showed you their pictures.” 

Yes, she had showed their pictures, and had 
said they were her nephews and nieces, but she 
had not said that they were Phil’s children. 

It was queer: they could not justify it to 
themselves, nor in any way explain it. But there 
is no doubt that after this contretemps and ex- 
planation neither of the two cared to go on with 
the other, just then, in just the easy and confi- 
dential way in which they had ridden before. As 
soon as Mrs. Abgar’s hour was ended she said 
she was a little tired, and she resumed her seat 
in the ambulance. Fred’s horse was fastened 
behind, and Fred took the vacant seat by Dustin. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


179 


But Hiram Brinkerhoff did not propose to drive 
in Dustin’s place, as he might have done, and 
they kept on, a broken party, till they came to 
Braunfels. 

Dustin at one moment pointed forward with 
his whip to a great yellow square patch of — who 
should say how many acres ? on a distant swell. 

“ Have they such wheat as that in your coun- 
try, Mrs. Abgar ? ” 

Efhe liked to hear him talk about the wonders 
of Texas. 

“ No, indeed,” said she. “ We have no wheat 
in my country. But, Mr. Dustin, not even in 
Texas, I think, is wheat as yellow as that on the 
second day of May.” 

“ Sure enough, mum, sure enough ! It must 
be flowers, mum ! ” 

And so it proved, when, after an hour’s riding, 
they passed through this yellow patch, and found 
themselves surrounded by forty acres of coreopsis 
in full bloom ! 

But Dustin had his revenge upon Effie, as she 
was frank enough to confess to him. She had 
made a sketch, involving one of these sweeps of 
tremendous distance, and she had written in on 
it for use, if she could ever put it in color, across 
a little bit of her middle distance, “little pond 


i8o 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


quite as blue as sky.” When they rode on and 
passed through the “pond” it proved to be a 
giant’s patch of blue verbenas ! 

The exquisite, clear spring of the San Marcos 
River is a natural curiosity which all travellers 
must stop to wonder at. San Marcos itself was 
a wonder to them, because it was their first town 
after they had left Austin. Then Braunfels with 
its quaint German look, mixed in with southern 
traits, and unmistakable Americanisms, would 
have been an interesting place to stay in. But, 
no ! they held on to their journey’s end this time; 
and at last, when they were well tired, they came 
to the point where Will Harrod bade good-by to 
Inez Perry, and so through fresh mesquit trees 
dashed on till they saw all the crosses and spires 
of San Antonio. Does any one, by good luck, 
know who Will Harrod and Inez Perry were ? 

And in San Antonio they found all that they 
had come for. First of all, in the Menger House, 
so neat and comfortable a home. Then, when 
they had washed and rested, such a funny walk, 
where no one knew an inch of the way. Wher- 
ever they went they came to the river, — and a 
river “as is a river,” — so active, so deep, so 
green, so satisfactory every way. “ What funny 
little bathing houses ! can people bathe in May } ” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


I8l 


It seemed as if every garden ran to the river and 
as if everybody had a bathing house in his gar- 
den of his own. 

None of them had ever been in Spain. But 
they supposed, and were perhaps right, that San 
Antonio looked like a little city in Spain, with 
these narrow streets sometimes made to give 
shade in summer, and with these white walls 
almost windowless, which make the sides of the 
streets. 

Yet sometimes they came to a distinctive Swiss 
cottage, and sometimes it was the legitimate 
Southern house with its broad gallery. Still 
Spain preponderated. And the Spanish talk in 
the streets preponderated over the German and 
the English. And when the four stood in either 
of the squares, the Military Plaza, or the Cathe- 
dral Plaza, or the Alamo Plaza, it was impossible 
to believe they were in their own land. 

A lovely sunset and a short evening before 
sweet sleep avenged and rubbed away the fa- 
tigue of eighty miles’ drive across the prairies. 


i 82 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


CHAPTER XVI. 

HE ladies slept in the same room. In the 



^ confidences of the toilet, night and morning, 
Hester told Effie, yes, of fifty things which she 
and Fred had agreed upon in the long talks of 
the day and evening before. But Effie — she 
did not know why, though she made up her 
mind to it two or three times — did not tell 
Hester of the mistake of Mr. Brinkerhoff and of 
her discovery of it, and of the foolish way in 
which for the moment it had disturbed her. Mrs. 
Abgar did not need to take the trouble, for, the 
night before, Fred Haydock had told Hester 
Sutphen the whole of it. And Hester could not 
conceive how or why the two men should have 
been mistaken. 

There had been some hitch about the expected 
letters the night before. But at breakfast the 
hitch was loosened, and the great stack of letters 
came in. To the gentlemen, not so many. To 
the ladies, galore. And over cooling mutton- 


OF A PULLMAN. 


183 


chops, and coffee which was cold before they 
were done they read, now silent and now aloud, 
with ejaculations of surprise. 

After the ladies had finished theirs, Efhe 
turned to Mr. Brinkerhoff, resolved to show that 
the stiffness of a minute of yesterday should not 
last. 

“And what are your letters } ” she said. “You 
have better luck than Fred has,” — for by this 
time Fred had insisted that they should not 
call him Mr. Haydock. 

“ Oh ! mine are all business, I am sorry to say, 
except this from my mother. She has sent me 
her picture, which she has just had taken at 
Meserve’s. It is not nearly good enough,” he 
added, fondly, as he gave it to Mrs. Abgar 
to look upon. 

“It is perfectly lovely,” said she, frankly, and 
with an artist’s pleasure. “ So friendly, and so 
young.” 

“ But why does not Amy write to you ? ” said 
Hester Sutphen, beginning to take advantage of 
the newly born intimacies. “ Is not there a word 
from Amy .? ” 

Hiram Brinkerhoff looked puzzled, was puzzled. 

“Why, this is ‘Amy,’” said he, at last. “It 
seems foolish to you, but I do not know, when I 


84 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


did not call my mother ‘ Amy.’ My father liked 
it. She liked it. And I am sure I liked it. 
It was a trick of a baby, and I never grew out of 
it when I was a man.” 

The girls would have given gold if they could 
have kept their faces unchanged. But they 
knew that blood flushed them. With the resolu- 
tion of martyrs at the stake they looked neither 
to the right nor to the left. Effie Abgar said 
nothing — had nothing to say. But the recollec- 
tion of speculations and discussions about what 
manner of woman Amy was would come back, 
even in that moment. Hester, because she was 
the interlocutor, forced herself to say, — 

“ Why, we took it for granted you were mar- 
ried ; and, for one, I wondered why you never 
said a word about your wife ! ” 

With this bold speech the conversation dropped 
for a moment. Fred Haydock would have given 
his hot omelette if he could have thought of any 
thing to say, but he could not. The pause was 
but for an instant, when Tom Dustin came in to 
ask if they would ride. 

Yes, they would ride. And he need not drive 
them. Mr. Haydock would drive. And each of 
the four said to himself or herself that the botch 
about Amy was over, and that it made no sort of 


OF A PULLMAN. 


185 


difference. And they ran up those queer stair- 
ways to their rooms round that Moorish court- 
yard, all saying to themselves, “ It was all non- 
sense, and will make no difference.” And when 
the girls came into their own room Hester kissed 
Efifie and said, — 

“ Did you think I was such a perfect fool ? 
For I did not till this morning.” 

“We were all fools for a tenth part of a 
second,” said Effie. “ But it will make no 
difference now.” 

Still, in her heart she felt it would make a 
difference. She understood in her heart of 
hearts, that she and this loyal, frank, thoughtful, 
experienced gentleman had been living together 
for many days, and she, for one, thinking much 
of him in other days, when they were not 
together, with an ease and a simplicity which 
would have been just possible, perhaps, had 
each been quite well informed as to the other, 
but to which, after these two blunders, it would 
be very hard to return. 

Hiram Brinkerhoff had had nearly twenty-four 
hours to consider another question. And Hiram 
Brinkerhoff was well aware, by this time, that 
with this lovely, conscientious, unselfish woman, 
so kind and affectionate, so quick of observation, 


1 86 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


but so unconscious of her own quickness and 
tenderness, he did not want to be on the same 
calm, reserved or unreserved relation in which 
they had lived, while he had supposed her to 
be a married woman, resting herself from the 
cares of housekeeping, while she played the 
matron for her friend. But Hiram Brinkerhoff 
knew that he must somehow show himself worthy 
such a woman if he would win her. And this, 
he knew, would take time. 

Of the four he was perhaps the very cheeriest 
of all, as they entered the ambulance. But it 
was a lovely day. They were to see if they had 
found what they had come so far to find ; and 
they were all cheery. 

“ I believe,” he said, so soon as all were seated, 
“ that we are to go and look for school-rooms for 
Miss Sutphen’s school. I have in my pocket a 
list of unoccupied old court-rooms and vestries 
of churches. Indeed, if she will pay enough, she 
may have an old corn bin in the corner of the 
Alamo, which the government has been storing 
some musket-barrels in.” 

All this was his invention. There was no 
such bin, nor such musket-barrels. But this 
must be said, because some readers are dull. 

I thank you,” said Hester, laughing. “ But I 


OF A PULLMAN. 


187 


will not trouble you to look for rooms with me. 
I know all my friends may not stay till autumn. 
Let us go out to one of the Missions. I can 
confess there, and receive absolution, which I 
need. Meanwhile there seem to be enough 
children here.” 

The multitude of children in the streets of a 
city in which there is no system of general school- 
ing, always amazes a New Englander. 

So they asked their way here, and asked it 
there — and without losing it more than twenty 
times, they came to one of the “ Missions.” It 
was not the one they started for, but what differ- 
ence did that make } 

A great ruined church — a ruin as satisfactory 
as if it had been in Morocco or Spain. Big dogs 
had to be quelled — and from the door of a hovel 
came out a pretty, shy-looking Mexican girl with 
an immense bunch of keys. Yes, there is a con- 
secrated altar still, and at fit times there is wor- 
ship still. But who worships, it would be hard 
to say! For all this is miles away from the 
city. But this was once the active centre of 
one of those colonies of reduced Indians, Ittdios 
reducidos^ which the Franciscans managed some- 
how to convert to habits of peace. Of Christi- 
anity in its other forms, it is said that they 


1 88 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


knew the sign of the cross when they saw it. 
And I am afraid they knew no more ! Where 
are they now ? Quien sabe ? 

It is a strangely fascinating place. A curious 
bit of careful carving here, two or three rough- 
hewn rails from a fence there ; a pile of fallen 
stones, a crucifix and an altar. The inquiring 
shy Mexican girl — the inquiring eager New 
England woman ! Are the two of the same 
race, and were they born into the same world } 

There are, I believe, five mission buildings in 
all. You might see two or three in a day ; but 
our travellers were in no hurry. There are 
wonders in the city as well — the archives to be 
hunted through, under Mr. Smith’s kind help, 
for rumors about Aaron Burr — for the fate of 
poor Philip Nolan the elder — and in the hope 
of a trace of Inez Perry and her aunt Eunice. 
No end of thoughtful and kind hospitalities from 
the gentlemen of the army, from their wives and 
daughters, whose welcome to their homes made 
these stray travellers feel as if this were not 
a bit of Spain, not a scrap from Mexico — but 
that all that had been a dream, and they were all 
at home. 

One of their friends took them to the head- 
quarters, and here they were most cordially wel- 


OF A PULLMAN. 


189 


corned. Here they saw the very table on which 
General Lee signed the great paper of capitula- 
tion at Appomattox Court House. Had you 
ever thought they had marble-topped tables in 
such places } ” And here were gentlemen who 
had been engaged in those long forced marches. 
Ay ! and ladies who had been watching and 
waiting at home for those gentlemen. It was 
hearing history, indeed, to listen to the anecdotes 
of those days. 

A thousand pretty hospitalities, a thousand 
funny adventures, when they did not know 
whether they were to speak German or Spanish, 
or the language of Pimos or Panis ; loiterings in 
gardens, and scampers on prairies, — took up the 
time, and would have taken up a great deal more. 

Only too fast, in the climate of paradise, 
slipped by the fortnight which was the furlough 
which the young men had granted themselves. 

In the morning, after an early walk, the ladies 
would paint or draw, or press their flowers, or 
dissect them, or sew or embroider, and the gen- 
tlemen would read or draw, or talk at their sides. 

In the afternoon, after a siesta, all four would 
ride. It never rained. 

Dear reader, if you have a friend, who is a 
little hectic, — who begins to cough ; and if the 


190 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


doctor begins to talk of a milder climate than 
that of Boston or Portland or Bangor, — think 
twice before you send him or her whom you 
love across the waters. While you are think- 
ing, determine whether it be not better for an 
invalid to stay in his own country. Let him 
go to San Antonio, said to be the most healthy 
city in the world. Since these ladies went, a 
railroad has been finished. So that the invalid 
need not leave the “ palace ” till he arrive at his 
journey’s end. And there, with this exquisite 
climate, there is all the variety of two or three 
civilizations ; and, best of all, the presence of 
friends who make him feel at home. 

A full fortnight after our party arrived, a fort- 
night which seemed much longer, so complete 
had been the change it wrought in all their 
habits ; — a fortnight in which they were wonted 
to fruit, and roses, peas, and other summer 
vegetables ; and, rising to a higher plane, to a 
climate without a touch of winter, and as yet 
without a breath of summer — to the real spring- 
tide of poetry — a full fortnight after their arrival 
the} made a merry horseback party, with some 
officers of the garrison, and some young ladies 
who were now near friends ; and of this party 
the objective was “ The Springs.” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


191 


The copious rush of the green waters of the San 
Antonio or of its sister river always makes a pic- 
turesque point whenever, in riding or in walk- 
ing, you come to either stream. There is a little 
watering-place, perhaps under German oversight, 
much favored by the people who have leisure for 
a drive, not many miles out of the town, where, 
in one or another corner, is a table set in the 
open air — where a bridge here, a bank of willows 
or mesquits there, give resting-places for talk, — 
and where, any afternoon, there cluster throngs 
of children — and of grown-up children, too — 
who are not beyond or above being amused. 

As it happened, on this particular afternoon, 
as the different members of the party strolled 
through the grounds together, Hiram Brinkerhoff 
and Efifie Abgar stood on a great mass of rock, 
from beneath which pours out a stream of raging 
water, as the fountain of Arethusa may be sup- 
posed to rush forth from its long underground 
prison. No end of underground waters there. 
There are people who think that two-thirds of 
the rainfall of the Valley of the Mississippi flows 
in such underground currents to the sea ! 

Frederic Haydock and Hester Sutphen had 
disappeared. They were lost, as one is apt to 
be, on a mesquit grown prairie, and as they had 
often been before. 


92 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


“ How happy they are,” said Hiram, when Mrs. 
Abgar had said she wondered where they would 
turn up this time. 

“ Yes indeed,” was her answer ; “and no one 
deserves happiness more than she.” Her eyes 
flashed as she praised her friend. “ You will say 
so, when you know her as I do. She has never 
sought happiness, since she gave me the biggest 
half of her stick of barley candy. She has never 
grumbled, but in fun. She has been her mother’s 
blessing ; where, indeed, any of us would have 
been but for her, I do not know. And, he ? I 
hope he is as true as he seems ” This with an 
eager question. 

“ Never fear for him,” said Hiram, boldly. 
“ Truer heart never beat, under breastplate or 
under muslin. I am glad to see how she loves 
him — but she cannot love that man too well. 
He is as gentle as he is true, and he is as true 
as he is brave.” 

And Hiram looked as handsome as Amadis 
himself as he blazed up for his friend. Both of 
them were silent for a moment — silent from the 
very emotion of pride with which they had 
spoken — silent as well, be it added, because 
each was so glad to speak to somebody who 
could respect such enthusiasm. The man took 


OF A PULLMAN. 


193 


courage first to break a silence which each en- 
joyed. 

I must leave this paradise to-morrow,” he 
said, and he faltered a moment, where I, too, 
have been happier than I have ever been in my 
life. I must go to my work again, for I too have 
something to do in life besides studying how I 
shall be happy. But I will not go till I have told 
you, what I think you know, how you are every 
thing to me ; and that, in the month since I met 
you so happily, I have been more, seen more, 
known more, and hoped more than in all my life 
before. May I tell Amy that,” and he smiled, 
half sadly, and may I ask her to write to you 
and beg you to make me perfectly happy ? There 
is a sweetheart who will never be jealous of you.” 
And he smiled with that serious smile again. 

No! She was not startled. 

“ My dear Mr. Brinkerhoff, you see in me what 
is not here. But I do not think that matters — 
I never thought I should stand where I stand — 
no, nor that I should say what I say. But — I 
should be very unwomanly — and very mean — 
if I did not say — as soon as I can find any 
words — that — that I should be very wretched, 
if I thought I must go back to the East alone!” 

It was a blundering answer. But it served her 
13 


194 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


turn and his. He flung his arm around her and 
kissed her, and led her by some mysterious by- 
way to the gate-way of “ the Springs.” He found 
their horses, without calling on any of the rest of 
the party, and they rode home before the rest of 
the party. 

Perhaps the army gentlemen thought that the 
New Englanders had very queer ways when they 
went on riding parties. If they did, they were 
unjust^ to the New Englanders ; for neither 
Mr. Haydock the carpet-bagger,” nor Mr. 
Brinkerhoff the “drummer,” hailed from New 
England. 

These gentlemen made all right that evening. 
At Mrs. Gen. McLain’s elegant party, no men 
were more attentive and courteous to all the 
guests than Mr. Haydock and his friend. Nor 
did the ladies lack attention, because the gen- 
tlemen of their personal escort left them mostly to 
the care of the gentlemen who were more at 
home. 

As one of the groups gathered round the 
piano, — in illustration of some story. Lieutenant 
Laudonni^re sang a little song in honor of 
Texas which he said a Spanish bishop, Don 
Diego Marin, wrote when Texas was yet a 
wilderness. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


195 


Dios te salve, tierra de Texas, 

Do Natura, con hermosuras 
Antes no conocidas se mostrd : 

Aqui la mano divina 
Que todo lo ordena, 

Con mas complacencia se pard. 

El llano de tus verdes prados, 

De mil colores esmaltados. 

Con la quietud del vasto mar 
Y Horizonte inmenso 
Se revela estenso 
Quando se ve el sol rayar. 

Entre mil naranjos fioridos. 

One se desmayen mis sentidos, — 

Quiero mis ’lores olvidar, 

E ya no Prelado, 

E dormir sepultadc 
En atmosfera de Azaar. 

Every one was delighted. “Only we do not 
understand the Spanish,” said Mrs. Abgar. “‘Mil 
colores’ I can well make out, and ‘naranjos,’ — 
but then I break down.” 

“ Then I will try again,” said the Lieutenant, 
and he sang his little translation : 

Fair land of Texas, Heaven save thee. 

Nature her choicest blessings gave thee 
And beauty all unknown before ! 

The all creating Word 
Thy loveliness preferred. 

Pronounced it good, and gave one blessing more ! 


1 96 WONDERFUL A D VENTURES 


Enamelled plains so far extending, 

A thousand rival colors blending, 

Stretch out as broadly as the lonely sea : 

When the first sunbeams shine 
On its horizon line, 

To show how wide and lovely earth can be. 

Thine orange breezes gently blowing 
Sweep all away the plague of knowing, 

I lay my Bishop’s grandeur gladly by. 

Beneath thy fragrant trees. 

Enjoy the scented breeze. 

And let these cares in thy Elysium die. 

In the hearty applause which followed the un- 
expected version, our four friends looked sympa- 
thetically, each on other, as if -this dear old 
Eishop had sung for them what they would be 
glad for themselves to say. 

Hester broke the silence to thank the Lieuten- 
ant. “You have given Mrs. Abgar all she 
needed to complete her song-book.” 

“ All ? — What is that } ” he asked laughing. 

“ Oh ! Mrs. Abgar is only a Boston cockney, 
you know. She never dreamed of what her own 
country was, — one out of many. But now she 
has picked up, in a month’s time, from the lips of 
her own countrymen : — 

“ First, a Pennsylvanian song, then a Chippe- 
way song.” 


OF A PULLMAN. 


97 


“ And a German and a French,” interrupted 
Fred Haydock. 

“ Don’t forget the negro song, and our Texan 
Methodist song,” said Effie. 

“ No ! no ! and there is a Norwegian song, and 
an Italian song, Lieutenant Laudonniere, and 
now you give her a Spanish song, — all sung by 
her own countrymen.” 

“ Let Mrs. Abgar stay only a few weeks longer, 
and she shall hear a Mexican ranchero, a Caman- 
che chief, a Greek Vivandi^re, and an Arab 
Sheikh, if I can find one of the camel drivers,” 
said he. “ They are all her countrymen, but I 
hope she would, all the same, be at home.” 

“ Indeed, I should be,” said Effie frankly. 
“And yet, do you know, Dustin, the good- 
natured fellow who drove our ambulance, would 
gladly have persuaded us to go as much farther, 
still in our own country, as we have come.” 

“Yes,” said Haydock, laughing, “I overheard 
him. ‘Just as well go on to Chihuahua, Mrs. 
Abgar, only five hundred miles, this team take 
,you easy in thirty days. Just as well go on to 
Fort Yuma, — only six hundred miles more, — this 
team take you easy. And then, Mrs. Abgar, 
nothing to go to San Frisky. Ever been to San 
Frisky, Mrs. Abgar } ever been there. Miss Sut- 
phen \ ’ These were the words he said.” 


198 WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


They all laughed. “ But we are too much at 
home here,” said Effie, “ though now we must 
say good-night to Mrs. McLain.” 

But here came, indeed, the end of this story. 
Not but the ladies spent the foreordained month 
in San Antonio. But the gentlemen left them 
the morning after Gen. McLain’s party, one to 
his office and the other to his merchandise. But 
when the end of May came — after Effie and 
Hester had had the charming month of rest 
and of paradise which they went for ; had read 
and sung, and drawn and painted — had picked 
flowers, and pressed them and analyzed them — 
had talked, and slept, and dreamed to their 
heart’s content — then their two fellow-travellers 
appeared again, knowing that they were ready to 
go back to other strawberries and to other 
cream. 

“ There is one more lion,” said Mrs. Abgar to 
one of their hosts as he called on the last even- 
ing “ which I shall ask you to take me to see. 
I’m sure there’s a market here, — no, I don’t 
mean a. butcher’s shop, a market in the open air. 
I always make Hester go to the markets with me. 
We have tried it here, but not before breakfast.” 

And so she had in every southwestern town 
where they had spent any time ; and though 


OF A PULLMAN. 


199 


sometimes they were not all her fancy painted, 
they were generally a great deal better. 

Neither Hiram nor Fred knew about the San 
Antonio market. But Mr. La Tour said very 
readily that he did know ; and, at half-past six in 
the morning of their last day, he knocked at 
their parlor door, and led them out of their 
dear Menger House, through the Alamo Plaza, 
and into the town beyond. “ We’re going to 
the Military Plaza,” he said. 

“A Plaza isn’t such a mysterious thing, after 
all,” said Hester, looking back at the gloomy 
beautiful Alamo, across a wide expanse of gravel 
and dust. “ It will be a good word to astonish 
them with at home, but the more familiar Square 
describes it as well for us.” 

“No, indeed!” cried Effie. “Squares aren’t 
as large.” 

“ A Plaza was a Plaza once,” said Mr. La Tour. 
“ When you saw a little army drawn up in the 
Military Plaza, where we are going ; or when the 
Greasers, as you call them, were beating through 
the Alamo gates behind us, — then Miss Sut- 
phen would have found it Spanish enough.” 

Spanish enough they did find it, when, at the 
end of their walk, they came out into the great 
open space crowded with ox-carts, mule-carts, 


200 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


saddled horses, and buyers and sellers. The 
brown Mexicans with stiff black hair under those 
felt sombreros, so dear to Effie’s heart, with 
actually leathern straps to keep them on, like 
little boys ; light cotton shirts, red-topped boots, 
or leathern leggings, and an occasional crimson 
silk scarf round the waist, or a gay handkerchief 
about the neck, — such figures as these, with 
melancholy brown faces, as much Indian as 
Spanish, were quite as delightful as the ideal 
Texan herdsmen, though they were not at all 
the same thing. And the women were a new 
revelation of the possible beauty of the arrange- 
ment of a shawl over the head ; though our 
travellers wished that their Moorish reserve 
didn’t sometimes make them hold it over the 
lower part of the face. Such people as these 
they had often seen before in “ San Antone,” 
especially in Chihuahua, as they call the Mexican 
quarter ; but never so many together, and never 
under such delightful circumstances. There was 
a little boy struggling with a lively cock which 
he had bought against its will; there were women 
selling the brightest of green and red vegetables ; 
there — but Mr. La Tour was pointing out one 
group, the most Mexican of all. One of the 
women was sitting on the ground with a great 


OF A PULLMAN. 


201 


three-legged black iron pot before her ; there was 
no fire visible, but she was taking out and dis- 
tributing some kind of hot breakfast, which her 
friends were eating at a table with a white cloth 
close by. One or two preferred squatting on 
the ground ; her little daughter, in her gray veil, 
was handing round cups of coffee. Behind, were 
the strong light ox-carts which carry cotton to 
Mexico, of which some of the guests were 
probably drivers ; farther back still, were the 
low, white, stucco Spanish houses of the square. 
Effie’s sketch of part of all this was interrupted 
by Mr. La Tour’s bringing her some of the con- 
tents of the pot : this was a little bundle, wrapped 
in a soft and thin corn-husk in which it had been 
cooked. Inside was Indian meal and red pepper 
and mince-meat ; and, strange to say, it was very 
nice! It made Eflfie’s breakfast that day. 

“ The meal for this must be ground by hand," 
said Mr. La Tour, and he led them into a pawn- 
broker’s shop close by, where they saw low stone 
three-legged stools, with other stones upon them ; 
and these, they were told, were mills, at which 
two women ground, almost as they did in Pales- 
tine. All sorts of other interesting things were 
in this shop ; gay worsted hat-bands, saddles, 
whips, silver jewelry, every thing in fact which 


202 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


a Mexican can pawn to pay his gambling debts ; 
and unfortunately of these there are too many. 

On the way home, before they crossed the 
pretty bridges over the deep blue river, — they 
thought no Swiss lake could be bluer, — on 
the way home, they stopped at another shop, 
where they could get chocolate, and graceful 
earthen water-coolers, and tremendous whips 
to carry home with them for the boys, and 
Mexican tobacco for the gentlemen (“the only 
good thing the Greasers do make” said Tom 
Dustin), and high colored hat-bands for Phil 
Abgar’s boys, — and, indeed, “no end” of quaint 
half-savage tokens. They asked- in vain for 
long gray silk shawls which the brown women 
wore ; though they saw them directly after- 
wards in the street ; their wearers were carrying 
great wooden cages of little birds, and offered 
them to the ladies with mysterious smiles. The 
Mexicans were almost the only women to be 
seen on foot in the streets. Hester had been 
out alone once walking , and, though no one was 
rude to her, she had not been sorry to rejoin her 
own sex : the solitude in company was as shock- 
ing as Alexander Selkirk found the tameness of 
the beasts. This was Spanish too. 

Little appetite, after the nameless morning 


OF A PULLMAN, 


203 


cakes, for the nice Menger House breakfast. 
And then when the last good-byes were spoken, 
Dustin having been summoned once more, they 
started to cross the prairie to Austin. This 
time no brigands frightened them. They arrived 
just in time to secure berths “six” and “seven,” 
“ eight ” and “ nine,” in the Pullman. Shall we 
say of course Aurelius was standing on the plat- 
form 1 — “ Here’s your palace car, ladies and 
gentlemen.” 

Of course the palace was the Golconda. 


204 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


CHAPTER XVII. 

HEN they arrived in Austin a month be- 



^ ^ fore, they had entered Austin in the 
early morning. The ladies were then alone, and 
rather doubtful of the adventure they were 
essaying ; the gentlemen also were alone, a 
few days after, and eager to join their agreeable 
companions. It has been confessed already in 
these pages, that, of all the experiences of life in 
Palaces, the morning hour is the least agreeable. 
There is an attentive lackey, yes ! But even he 
is engaged in making sixteen beds return to 
their hiding-places, and in making sixteen sofas 
appear in their places. There is no turbaned 
page with soft step to bring you a cup of coffee. 
There is no luxurious seat on an open veranda 
covered with honeysuckle and quamoclit. There 
is close air without, and faintness, hunger, and 
general misery within, till one can touch his 
mother earth, as Antaeus did, and breathe his 
mother air. Then one returns to the Palace 
after he has breakfasted to find all changed : he 


OF A PULLMAN. 


205 


is ready for empire, and another day of monarch 
life begins. 

As all of the four whose fortunes we follow 
had first entered Austin from the east in such 
guise of the misery of early morning, it followed 
that there was a surprise every minute, now 
that they dashed eastward, caught sight of the 
river, and through the prairies, with the sights 
of beauty, which they had not guessed at when 
they came. Indeed — indeed — each of the four 
was now in a mood, than which earth has little 
more heavenlike ; and because they were happy 
already, they were all the more ready to enjoy. 

“ May decked the world, and Arthur filled the throne.” 

Hester almost sang these words as they re- 
tired slowly from the open door at the rear of 
the car, where they had been wondering at the 
beauty of the cross lights and the cloud shadows 
on the prairie, always so marvellous. 

“ The last day of May,” said Hiram Brinker- 
hoff. “ But w'here is this line. Miss Hester, 
which drops from you so often, by night and 
morning ; and is there more of the same poem ? 
Or is it perhaps the beginning of an unpublished 
epic by Miss Sutphen and Mr. Haydock } 

‘ May decked the world, and Arthur filled the throne.’ ” 


206 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


“ There is more, — and more as good as that, — 
if you will only search wisely, Mr. Hiram. Ask 
Effie there, and she will repeat to you the whole 
story of two happy lovers in a happy valley, — 
only — ” and she stopped. 

“ Only,” said Effie bravely, that the true 
knight had to go away to attend to his distant 
duty, and the fair lady had to stay in the valley 
without him ; ” and then, more seriously, she 
repeated, — 

“ ‘ And I might ask how more can mortals please 
The heavens, than thankful to enjoy the earth ? 

But through its mist, my soul, though faintly, sees 
Where thine sweeps on beyond this mountain girth, 
And awed and dazzled, bending I confess 
Life may have holier ends than happiness.’ 

“You see,” she added after a moment, “this 
lady was a princess. She had always lived in 
palaces, and she had always done as she chose, 
and had had her own way, till Arthur came ; and 
then she had to do as he chose, and let him have 
his own way, — even when that way took him 
outside the mountain valley, and far very far 
from her.” 

“All the same,” said Fred, who would not 
come down from the extreme good-cheer of his 
mood, — “all the same no one tells me who this 
Arthur was. Was he in the wholesale drug 


OF A PULLMAN. 


207 


business, travelling on account of ‘ Mandrake, 
Bromide, & Co.,’ — and was this palace in which 
the princess lived a palace on wheels, and did he 
have to return to Caradoc, that the firm might 
be able to answer his orders for the fall trade, — 
or was he in the quack-nostrum line, I beg par- 
don, in the Panacea business, travelling for Row- 
land, Crespigny, & Co., — and had he heard that 
another house was introducing a new nervine } ” 

“ He shall not be jeered at,” said Hester re- 
proachfully, “though he certainly was a travel- 
ling gentleman,” she added. “ If there are any 
knights of this generation who have not read 
Bulwer’s ‘ King Arthur,’ it is time they did. 
For rather staid, old-fashioned poetry, — a little 
machine-built, but good in doctrine, and some- 
times bubbling into the supreme article — it is 
very good travelling reading for four wandering 
lovers.” 

“ We will read it aloud between St. Louis and 
New York,” cried Hiram. And he took a tele- 
graph blank from the ready rack, — and, to his 
correspondent at St Louis, wrote, — 

“ Bring me Bulwer’s ‘ King Arthur ’ at evening train on 
second.” 

“Tell me,” said he, “that King Arthur also 
shall not be enthroned in the Golconda.” 


208 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


“ It is all very fine,” said Hester, as he came 
back from forwarding his despatch, at Hemp- 
stead, — “ and I am sure I like to imagine that 
Effie’s real name is Aegle, and that mine is Elaine, 
but, all the same, I do not believe that Elaine or 
Queen Guinever herself ever had a horned frog.” 

“ Had what } ” 

Had a horned frog ! Did you never see one } ” 
And she opened her handkerchief ; and gently 
stroked one of the weird little monsters, which, 
while the gentlemen were absent, she had bought 
of a boy at the car window. 

They both affected horror at sight of the little 
wretch. 

“He is a hundred thousand million billion 
years old,” cried Hay dock. “He was made be- 
fore evolution began. The evening and the 
morning were the first day.” 

“ Aegle was stroking him when Arthur bade 
her good-by in the happy valley,” said Hiram. 
“ He carries you back behind all the Babels.” 

“ Some merits he has which later times have 
lost,” said Hester, “ for he needs no food, and I 
believe no water. 

‘ With temperance he both eats and drinks. 

And gives the poor the whole.’ ” 

“ He is no more a frog than I am,” cried Effie, 


OF A PULLMAN. 


209 


with her naturalist skill. “ He is a lizard of the 
genus PhrynosomUy whatever that may mean. 
He is Phrynosoma orbicular because, if you 
please, his body is so orbicular. And dear old 
Phil will be glad to have him to catch flies in the 
green-house, and to amuse the boys : they have all 
seen him in the Iconographic Cyclopaedia. I am 
not sure but he is cornuta and not orbiculare!' 

“ Do you say he eats nothing } ” 

“ Oh, not for a week or two, if his keepers are 
on their last greenbacks, as we are.” 

“ He looks as if he had eaten nothing since 

‘ This fair world first rounded to the view.’ 

You will never tell me that Texas is a new 
country again.” 

“Can anybody tell me,” said Effie, as the 
train moved away from the station, and they 
began their northward way, — “why Texas was 
left out till the very end of time. When such 
crags and deserts as those of Tommy’s rocks 
in Roxbury, and the marshes of Cambridgeport 
have been peopled, — why has this lovely Texas 
with these 

‘ Enamelled plains so far extending,’ 
been left desert, and without any people but 
these ante-creationals.” 


14 


210 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


“Philip the Second, my dear,” said Hester. 
“ Fred has been coaching me.” 

“ Pope Alexander the Sixth,” said Fred. “ Hi- 
ram has been lecturing to me.” 

“ Laziness and greed,” said Brinkerhoff : “ there 
was never such a horrible illustration of bad 
government.” 

“ Poor La Salle,” he continued, “ after he had 
discovered the course of the Mississippi, came 
out here with a colony, — and here they killed 
him : he must have crossed our line, I fancy, not 
so very far from where we are.” 

“That gave France a right here, if there were 
any right; and that made Spain afraid that 
P'rance would come near her silver mines yonder. 
And so, as Hester says, Spain enacted that 
neither oil-olive, nor luscious grape, neither wheat 
nor maize, nor sugar nor cotton, should grow on 
these thousands upon thousands of thousands of 
acres. Better they should lie waste for ever, 
than that the most Catholic King’s people and 
the most Christian King’s people should come 
too near together.” 

“ What broke all that down } ” 

“To answer in very short metre, — Philip 
Nolan broke it down, so Judge Harford here 
says. If I could make you stop two days longer. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


2II 


we would go over to Waco yonder, and find his 
grave, and plant lilies upon it.” 

“ And I might liberate my frog there.” 

But there was not much more talk. A sharp 
thunder-storm struck them as it grew dark, and 
there was little for it, but to look at this fork of 
the “ flames of the lightning,” and to wonder at 
that crash, till Aurelius changed the day pal- 
ace into a night palace. 

And when they woke again, they were cross- 
ing the Red River, more than two hundred 
miles higher up than they had left it at Shreve- 
p’ort. And how red it is ! almost vermilion ! 
And this country, too, “the garden of Texas” as 
they were assured, was laughing with beauty. 

And then, not long after, they bade Texas 
good-by. And now they were in the Indian 
Territory. And all that day — stopping net once 
an hour — they were speeding north, with this 
same eager flight, through the rich green of the 
prairie land, of wealth which cannot be told ; 
and for an hour at a time there would be no sign 
of man but the track of the railway ! 

“ Oh dear, oh dear ! ” sighed Effie, “ if my poor 
Shays, and Donavans and Mrs. Murphy and the 
Holden boys were only here, instead of starving 
in Lucas Street and in Oswego Street, instead 


212 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


of drinking in Sands Court, and dying of cholera 
infantum in Swett Street.” 

Do you know why they are not here, and 
why they cannot be here ? Do you know why 
Rothschild, with all his wealth, cannot buy an 
acre of this land ? ” This was Hiram’s question. 

“ Cannot ! I thought money could do every 
thing. It could at Fort Sill yonder,” and Hester 
pointed over her shoulder westward. 

“Cannot,” said Fred Haydock, laughing, “un- 
less Baron Rothschild married a Cherokee lady! 
Then he might buy till he were tired, — or, in- 
deed, have, without buying, I believe.” 

Then Hiram explained that the United States 
government had bound itself by treaty with the 
Cherokees and Chickasaws and Choctaws, and 
Creeks and Seminoles and Muscogees, — never 
to sell any of this land, as long as the winds 
should blow or the waters flow. He explained 
that, all told, there were not a hundred thousand 
of these Indians. But that, such is the force of 
treaties, these hundred thousand Indians, who 
are not hunters, generally speaking, but have 
settled down to farming, have a matchless terri- 
tory, a third part the size of France, given to 
them ; which is, acre for acre, far more produc- 
tive than France is. He explained that no one. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


213 


not an Indian of another tribe even, might enter 
here, because the United States had made these 
treaties with these people. 

“ Will any one explain to me,” said Effie, “ in 
what this policy differs from that of Philip the 
Second ? ” 

But nobody explained. 

All the same, the train dashed on. There is 
something almost weird and uncanny in this 
sailing through oceans of green, only broken by 
pretty copses of wood or gentle swells of land, 
without a fence, a house, a barn, a road beside 
that you travel on, without cow or horse or 
sheep. Only an unused fertile world waiting for 
men ! 

But at every station-house, there would be one 
or two men waiting, and sometimes a passenger. 
They must have come from somewhere. And 
once there was a college, after they came into 
the Cherokee country. But Hester confesses 
that, in her journal, it is not the political econo- 
my that is noted, nor the advance of the Chero- 
kees in education, but that good supper at 
Muskogee ! 

On and on ! Conundrums as it grew dark in 
the evening ; an effort to talk with the reticent 
half-breed lady who came into the car on her 


214 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


way northward, where she had a daughter at 
school in Ohio. And then, all the light melts 
away, though we are in June ; and, as they be- 
gin to be drowsy, even the substantial fabric 
of the palace melts away, the sofas are gone, the 
people are gone, and “ Six and Seven ” have 
been “ made up ” by the faithful Aurelius, and 
the tired travellers “ turn in.” 

Asleep and unconscious they pass through 
Kansas, where in old times their own brothers 
had fought and conquered. They wake to an- 
other climate, and another vegetation. They 
are in the South no longer. They are in a des- 
ert no longer. They are forging on and on, 
down the valleys that lead to the Missouri, with 
here a town and there a town, and all the first 
scars of man’s conflict with nature. 

What seems strangest of all, in such a journey, 
is the setting back of the orchards and farm- 
lands some three weeks, between your night and 
your morning. When you pass in a day a beau- 
tiful desert like the Indian Territory, so as to 
leave, as these people had done, the gardens of 
northern Texas on Tuesday morning to come 
into those of central Missouri on Wednesday 
morning, with no fine gradation by the way, but 
by one sudden leap, it is all the more strange. 


OF A PULLMAN. 


215 


They had a Sunday-school picnic tumbled in 
on the train somewhere, a strawberry party or 
some such entertainment. And when, at Jeffer- 
son, Hiram rushed out to forage, he was led 
away by the throng. For he acted on Jacob 
Abbot’s direction to Rollo, for travelling, “ Go 
where the rest go.” But, as he soon found that, 
if he went to hear the Rev. Abner Goosh make 
a “few remarks” to the children, he should not 
rejoin his own party, he was seen by them rush- 
ing wildly back to the station-house, only in time 
to seize from a licensed dealer a loaf of bread, 
to wave it in the air over the head of a deacon, 
so as to attract the licensed dealer’s attention, 
and to deposit, as probable pay, two nickels on 
the counter. Even with these abridgments of 
the process of bargaining, Hiram returned to 
the Golconda only as she began to move. 

“ It was,” he said, “as Miles Standish took the 
corn, and left in its place a leather jerkin, though 
he saw no salvages.” 

So this large loaf was to be their lunch, for 
they had voted not to dine till they came to St. 
Louis. Then was it that the innate hospitality 
appeared, of those who live in Palaces. The 
Russian gentleman from Alaska, who had come 
in, in the night, offered caviare, the Mexican gen- 


2I6 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


tleman, who had been a fellow passenger all the 
way from Austin, offered chocolate, the half- 
breed lady offered butter, which was of all the 
sweeter taste, because it was Cherokee butter 
from a Cherokee cow. Knives, forks, spoons, 
vodka if they would have had it, nay, prob- 
ably, saki from Japan. So our friends made a 
merry picnic, from a table served by half the 
world. 

“ Do you remember in the ‘ Evenings at Home ’ 
a Presbyterian offered her smelling-bottle, and a 
Quaker ran for the doctor } ” 

“Do I remember it.? It comes down like a 
forgotten prophecy of the kingdom coming ! 
But I can see now the broad-brimmed man, in 
the picture. The only time, I think that I ever 
saw a Quaker run, always excepting Obed Macy 
when we played foot-ball in college.” 

And now they were by the Southern side of 
the Missouri. The great “ rampage ” was not 
over, on which they had all four floated, two 
months before. 

“ Since we met, I have been reading La Salle’s 
account of this very ‘Muddy’ River, Pekatonoui 
they called it, which meant muddy.” 

“ Men change, but rivers do not. But think, 
— I suppose he was half a year coming here 


OF A PULLMAN. 


217 


from Canada, and when shall we cross the Ni- 
agara ? ” 

“ Before we wake on Thursday morning ! ” 

“ That is flying, indeed ! ” 

And at St. Louis the faithful and hospitable 
Jabez Cottingham appeared, with the needed 
“ King Arthur.” Surely they would stop for a few 
days. No ! not they. They were homeward bound, 
and they could only stop for the supper, which was 
their dinner, and then on again in the Golconda. 
For the good fortune of this particular visit had 
ordered her back to New York again. 

So they crossed, as day paled, the wonderful 
bridge ; but of Illinois they can tell little, for 
they slept as they swept through. 

“ Illinois,” said Hiram, “ means ‘ men.’ The 
natives here would not acknowledge that there 
were any others.” And, when they breakfasted 
in that weird, many-landish breakfast-room at 
Chicago, he told where that word “Chicago” ap- 
pears first in literature. It was at a great council 
which Tonti held in 1659, when chiefs from 
Chicago were made to give in their fealty to Le 
Grand Monarque, Louis XIV. Does some Chi- 
cago King of Corn and Corners think of that 
some day, as he walks through the battle gallery 
of republican Versailles ? 


2I8 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


On and on, for ever on ! We oil the wheels. 
We feed the men and women. We water the 
engine. But that is all, and we rush through 
Michigan for another day. 

“ Si peninsulam amoenam quaeris, circum- 
spice.” This is the droll motto of the State. 
Droll but very true! Names all mixed together, 
from all the eras of history, — Niles, Kalamazoo, 
Homer, Jackson, Ann Arbor, Ypsilanti, and De- 
troit 1 A well-read man he, profound in the phi’ 
losophy of history, who will weave together, in 
the damask web of a day’s story, the threads 
which are spun out by the associations of those 
names I And at Detroit, such a sunset I and 
such a supper I It is your last of Western pro- 
fusion, Hester and Effie, Hiram and Fred ! 

Night drops a curtain over Canada, but still 
we rush on! Yes, we do not even wake to see 
Niagara in the morning. We do not really wake 
till we breakfast at Rochester ! 

And all that day, as our little party were 
whirled on in their palace over that New York 
Central Road, which Mr. Howells has made clas- 
sical for lovers and for travellers, they had to 
wonder at the agriculture of the North, as if they 
had come from another world. Two cows only 
together, or at most ten or twelve ! How lonely 


OF A PULLMAN 


219 


they must be ! and how small these fields ! how 
narrow all these measures, to people who had 
forgotten fences, and felt as if all men owned, if 
they would take it, all the world ! 

And if they felt this in New York, how much 
more when they came to the gardens — farms no 
longer — of their dear Massachusetts ! But how 
delicious home was I How they rushed from 
window to window to see a mountain or cascade ! 
How they sympathized with the little boy from 
Illinois, when he called his mother to show to 
her the marvel, which he saw for the first time, 
— a Yankee “stone wall”! 

On and on ! Night settled on them at 
Palmer. Still it was on and on I And when, at 
last, they swept into the sight of Charles River 
by the Arsenal in Watertown, as it lay there 
beautiful under the moon so nearly full, the 
Tenore Assoluto of the party sang the last song 
of the Palace Journey. 

At Springfield they had lost most of their 
companions, with eager goodbyes and promises 
of mutual visits. At Worcester, that nice Aus- 
tralian lady, with her five boys, who had come 
through from San Francisco by palace, left them 
that she might go on to Halifax, by the route 
which leaves Boston out in the cold. So was it 


220 


WONDERFUL ADVENTURES 


that our friends were all alone between Worces- 
ter and Boston. For the Golconda did not reg- 
ularly belong on that line, nor do I know how it 
came there. 

As they swept by the Arsenal at Watertown, 
and the moon shone brightly on the river, 
Hiram broke out, as of old on the Juniata, into 
singing : — 






3 


I sang in the daylight, I sing in the dark, 

I sing by Charles River, I sang by San Marc ; 


I sang in the mesquit, until the woods rang — 
By the blue Juniata I rode and I sang. 


From the land of the olive, the orange, and vine. 
The mesquit sent love to the cedar and pine. 

The land of the jasmine, the myrtle, and rose, 
Has sent my true love to the land of the snows. 


The land of the sunset that’s glowing afar. 

Has sent my true love to the cold northern star. 

But at this moment all romance ceased. A 
belated baggage agent came into the palace for 


OF A PULLMAN. 


221 


orders. “ Baggage taken to any part of the city. 
What hotel, Sir } ” 

And the glamour of the orange and vine left 
them ; and, as they saw the gas lights of the 
Western Avenue and Beacon Street, they knew 
that the journey of the dear Golconda was 
ended. 

“ Dear, dear Philip ! and are the children all 
well .? ” 

“ Well and hearty, — and you t ” 

“All well! we are all well! This is Hiram 
— I mean this is Mr. Brinkerhoff, and this is 
Mr. Haydock.” 

And Philip had kissed Hester Sutphen al- 
ready. 


THE END. 


Cambridge : Press of John Wilson & Son. 


EDWARD E HALE’S WRITINGS. 


» ■ 

HIS LEVEL BEST. i6mo. ^1.25. 

“ We like Mr. Hale’s style. He is fresh, frank, pungent, straight* 
torward, a-nd pointed. ^ Ihe first story is the one that gives the book itt 
title, and it is related in a dignified manner, showing peculiar genius and 
humorous talent. The contents are, ‘His Level Best,’ ‘The Brick 
Moon,’ ‘Water Talk,’ ‘Mouse and Lion,’ ‘The Modern Sinbad,’ 
‘ A Tale of a Salamander.’ ” — Philadelphia Exchange. 

GONE TO TEXAS j or, The Wonderful Adventures of a 
Pullman. i6nio. ^i.oo. 

“ There are few books of travel which combine in a romance of true love 
so many_ touches of the real life of many people, in glimpses of happy 
homes, in pictures of scenery and sunset, as the beautiful panorama un- 
rolled before us from the window's of this Pullman car. The book is 
crisp and bright, and has a pleasant flavor ; and whatever is lovely in the 
spirit of its author, or of good report in his name, one may look here and 
find promise of both fulfilled.” — Exchange, 

WHAT CAREER? or. The Choice of a Vocation and the 
Use of Time. i6mo. ^1.25. 

‘“ What Career? ’ is a book which will do anybody good to read ; es- 
pecially is it a profitable book for young men to ‘ read, mark, and in- 
wardly digest.’ Mr Hale seems to know what young men need, and 
here he gives them the result of his large experience and careful obser- 
vation. A list of the subjects treated in this little volume will sufficiently 
indicate its scope: (i) The Leaders Lead ; (2I The Specialties; (3) No- 
blesse Oblige ; (4) The Mind’s Maximum; (5) A Theological Seminary; 
(6) Character ; (7) Responsibilities of Young Men ; (8) Study Outside 
School ; (9) The Training of Men ; (10) Exercise.” — Watchman. 

UPS AND DOWNS. An Every-Day Novel. i6rao, 

^1.50. 

“ This book is certainly very enjoyable. It delineates American life so 
graphically that we feel as if Mr. Hale must have seen every rood ol 
ground he describes, and must have known personally every character 
he so cleverly depicts. In his hearty fellowship with young people lies 
his great power. The story is permeated with a spirit of glad-heartedness 
and elasticity which in this hurried, anxious, money-making age it is most 
refreshing to meet with in any one out of his teens ; and the author’s sym- 
pathy with, and respect for, the little romances of his young friends is 
most fraternal.” — Church Magazine, 

•— 

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THE GOOD TIME COMING; or, Our New Crusad®. 
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“ It has all the characteristics of its brilliant author, — unflagging en 
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vitality that sets one’s blood tingling. Whoever has read ‘ Ten Times 
One is Ten’ will know just what we mean. We predict that the new 
volume, as being a more charming story, will have quite as great a parish 
of readers. The gist of the book is to show how possible it is for the 
best spirits of a community, through wise organization, to form them- 
selves into a lever by means of which the whole tone of the social status 
may be elevated, and the good and highest happiness of the lielpless 
many be attained through the self-denying exertions of the powerful 
few. ” — Southern Churchman. 

THE INGHAM PAPERS. i6mo. ^1.25. 

“ But it is not alone for their wit and ingenuity we prize Mr. Hale's 
stories, but for the serious thought, the moral, or practical suggestion 
underlying all of them. They are not written simply to amuse, but have 
a graver purpose. Of the stories in the present volume, the best to our 
thinking is ‘ The Rag Man and Rag Woman.’ ” — Boston Transcript- 

HOW^ TO DO IT. i6mo. $ 1 . 00 . 

“ Good sense, very practical suggestions, telling illustrations (in words), 
lively fancy, and delightful humor combine to make Mr. Hale’s hints 
exceedingly taking and stimulating, and we do not see how either sex 
can fail, after reading his pages, to know How to Talk, How to Write, 
How to Read, How to go into Society, and How to Travel. These, with 
Life at School, Life in Vacation, Life Alone, Habits in Church, Life 
with Children, Life with your Elders, Habits of Reading, and Getting 
Ready, are the several topics of the more than as many chapters, and 
make the volume one which should find its way to the hands of every 
boy and girl. To this end we would like to see it in every Sabbath-school 
library in the land.” — Congregationulist. 

CRUSOE IN NEW YORK, and other Stories. i6mo. 

$ 1 . 00 . 

“ If one desires something unique, full of wit, a veiled sarcasm that 
is rich in the extreme, it will all be found in this charming little book. 
The air of perfect sincerity with which they are told, the diction, re- 
minding one of ‘The Vicar of Wakefield,’ and the ludicrous improbabil- 
ity of the tales, give them a power rarely met with in ‘ short stories.’ 
There is many a lesson to be learned from the quiet little volume.” 

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EDWARD E. HALES WRITINGS. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY, and other 

Tales. i6mo. ^1.25. 

*‘A collection of those strange, amusing, and fascinating stones, which, 
in their simplicity of narrative, minpte detail, allusion to passing occur- 
rences, and thorough naturalness, make us almost feel that the differ- 
ence between truth and fiction is not worth mentioning. Mr. Hale is the 
prince of story-tellers ; and the marvel is that his practical brain can have 
such a vein of frolicsome fancy and quaint humor running through it. It 
will pay any one to think while reading these.” — Universalist Quarterly- 

WORKINGMEN’S HOMES. Illustrated. i6mo. ^i.oo. 

“ Mr. Hale has a concern, as the Friends say, that laboring men should 
Have better homes than they usually find in the great cities. He believes 
all the great charities of the cities fail to overtake their task, because the 
working men are always slipping down to lower degrees of discomfort, 
unhealthiness, and vice by the depressing influences surrounding their 
homes. He writes racily and earnestly, and with rare literary excellence.” 
— Presbyterian. 

TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN : The Possible Reforma- 
tion. A new edition, in two parts. Part I. The Story. Part 
II. Harry Wadsworth and Wadsworth Clubs. i6mo. $>i.oo. 

HARRY WADSWORTH’S MOTTO. 

** To look up and not down ; To look out and not in ; and 

To look forward and not back ; To lend a hand. 

“ The four rules are over my writing-desk and in my heart. Everj 
school boy and girl of age to understand it should have this story, and, « 
I was rich enough, should have it.” — Extract from a letter by an utu 
known correspondent. 

MRS. MERRIAM’S SCHOLARS. A Story of th( 

‘‘ Original Ten.” i6mo. $1.00. 

“ It is almost inevitable that such a book as ‘ Ten Times One is Ten 
should suggest others in the same line of thought ; and Mr. Hale begins 
in ‘ Mrs. Merriam’s Scholars ’ to take up a few of what he terms the 
* dropped stitches ’ of the narrative. The story is exceedingly simple, so 
far as concerns its essentials, and carries the reader forward with an inter- 
est in its motive which Mr. Hale seldom fails to impart to his writings. 
. . . The two already published should be in every Sunday-school library, 
and, indeed, wherever they will be likely to fall into the hands of appreciri^ 
tive readers.” 


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♦— 

SEVEN SPANISH CITIES, and the Way to Them. 
i6mo. ^x.25. 

“The Rev. E. E. Hale’s ‘Spanish Cities’ is in the author’s most 
lively style, full of fun, with touches of romance, glimpses of history, allu- 
sions to Oriental literature, earnest talk about religion, consideration of 
Spanish politics, and a rapid, running description of everything that 
observant eyes could possibly see. Mr. Hale makes Spain more attrac- 
tive and more amusing than any other traveller has done, and he lavishes 
upon her epigram and wit.” — Boston Advertiser. 

CHRISTMAS EVE AND CHRISTMAS DAY. 

Ten Stories. i6mo. $ 1 . 2 ^. 

“ Many an eye has moistened, and many a heart grown kindlier with 
Christmas thoughts over ‘Daily Bread,’ and some of the lesser stars 
which now shine in the same galaxy; and the volume which contains 
them will carij on their humane ministry to many a future Christmas 
time.” — Christian Register, 

IN HIS NAME. A Story of the Waldenses, Seven Hun- 
dred Years ago. Square 1 8mo. Paper, 25 cents ; cloth, ^i. 00. 

“ A touching, almost a thrilling, tale is this by E. E. Hale, in its pa- 
thetic simplicity and its deep meaning. It is a story of the Waldenses 
in the days when Richard Coeur de Lion and his splendid following 
wended their way to the Crusades, and when the name ot Christ in- 
spired men who dwelt in palaces, and men who sheltered themselves in 
the forests of France. ‘In his Name’ was the ‘Open Sesame’ to the 
hearts of such as these, and it is to illustrate the power of this almost 
magical phrase that the story is written. That it is charmingly written, 
follows from its authorship. There is in fact no little book that we have 
seen of late that offers so much of so pleasant reading in such little space, 
and conveys so apt and pertinent a lesson of pure religion.” — N. Y. 
Commercial A dvertiser. 

“ The very loveliest Christmas story ever written. It has the ring of an 
old Troubadour in it.” 

A SUMMER VACATION. i6mo. 50 cents. 

“ After Mr. Hale’s return from Europe he preached to his people four 
sermons concerning his European experience. At the request of ‘some 
who heard them,’ Mr. Hale has allowed these sermons to be published 
with this title. They are full of vigorous thought, wide philanthropy, 
and practical suggestions, and will be read with interest by all classes.’ ~ 
Boston Transcript. 

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Messrs. Roberts Brothers Publications. 


TEN TIMES ONE SERIES. 


FOUR AND FIVE. 

A STORY OF A LEND-A-HAND CLUB. 

By EDWARD E. HALE, 

AUTHOR OF “ TEN TIMES ONE IS TEN,” “ IN HIS NAME,” “ MRS. MERRIAM’s 
SCHOLARS,” “how TO DO IT,” ETC. 

16mo. Clotli. Price, $1.00. 


Dr. Hale’s style is so well-known that it seems unnecessary to say more of 
one of his books than to announce its issue. The friends of the “ Ten Times 
One is Ten ” series will find this latest volume equally delightful with the others. 
Four boys of the “ Lend-a-Hand ” club camp one summer in the Kaatskills, 
and, in addition to trout-fishing and hunting, find time to practically illustrate 
their club name in various neighborly acts of kindness for the mountaineers. 
The first summer one new member is added, and each one enrolls a new member 
for the following summer. Thus doubling its membership, the work of the club 
in camp reunion each summer, and in various schools and towns in winter, is 
traced for four years, making a very bright and interesting story. — Ptiblic 
Opinion. 

Stories about woodland camps are always of interest to boys, and Dr. Edward 
Everett Hale knows how to write and touch the innermost chord of sympathy in 
young hearts. The Wadsworth mottoes and their work form the theme of Dr. 
Hale’s latest story^ “ Four and Five.” The delightful camp, the ice-boat race, 
the stories of the incidents in various parts of the world, the formation of the 
club all go to make up a very readable story. Every boy will be benefited by it. 
— Boston T imes. 

A new volume has been published in Edward Everett Hale’s popular “Ten 
Times One ” series which is entitled “ Four and Five. A story of a Lend-a-Hand 
Club.” The story is imbued with all that strong, fresh, original, and helpful style 
for which the distinguished author is so famous, and which has made him so 
immense a favorite with young people, as well as with all older readers. Several 
interesting incidents occur during their camping times in which they splendidly 
carry out their lend-a-hand principle, and carry substantial aid and joy to the 
unfortunate. The story throughout is instinct with the brightest spirit, while the 
mottoes of the club are illustrated in a way to make it eminently helpful to 
every boy and girl in the land. — Boston Home Journal. 


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IN HIS NAME. 

/ story of the Waldenses, Seven Hundred Years Ago. 

Illustrated. 

By EDWARD E. HALE. 


i6mo, cloth, 129 illustrations by G. P. Jacomb-Hood. 



It deals with the Waldenses, reads like a troubadour song, as the late 
Mrs. Jackson said, and fully deserves the holiday dress in which it is now 
brought out. The book will delight all readers who understand integrity, 
purity, and good-sense; it is historically accurate; it is a jewel, both as a 
work of art and in ethics; and it is good holiday reading. — Beacon. 


ROBERTS BROTHERS . . . BOSTON. 


FRANKLIN IN FRANCE. 

Part I. The Alliance. 

Part II. The Treaty of Peace, and Franklin’s Life till his Return. 
By EDWARD E. HALE and E. E. HALE, Jr. 

From Original Documents, most of which are now published for the 
first time. With three newly engraved portraits of Franklin from 
copies which are now quite rare, and numerous portrait-illustration 
throughout the text. 2 vols. 8vo. Cloth, gilt top, price $6.00. Half 
calf extra, $ 10 . 00 . 


It has always been recognized that the work of Franklin in France during the nine 
years of his mission there was of supreme importance to the cause of the American Rev- 
olution. It has not been so generally recognized, perhaps, to how great an extent his 
success in his mission was due to his own personal qualities, — to his wisdom, discretion, 
patience, forebearance, equanimity, and such like qualities, which made this simple Quaker 
from America the peer of the diplomats from all nations of Europe who met him in the 
French capital. One can realize this better after a careful perusal of the volumes under 
consideration, and appreciate better the debt we owe to Franklin. . . . The book is indeed 
a most valuable addition to an historical library, containing a great amount of material 
which cannot be found elsewhere, admirably arranged and published in most attractive 
form. — The Churchman. 

A threefold purpose is served by the work before us. It gives in detail, and with 
shrewd and sensible comment, the history of the diplomatic relations between France and 
America in our War of Independence; it presents, incidentally, an interesting picture of 
French social and political life ; and, finally, it throws new light on the sturdy individuality 
of Franklin himself. Altogether, the authors are to be warmly commended for the skill 
with which they have selected and arranged their material, and for the literary ability 
displayed in the descriptive and connecting matter. — Christian Union. 

Enough of history and explanation has been interwoven to make a clear and connected 
account of his official residence in that country. The work forms a fine treatise on diplo- 
matic service, giving as it does Franklin’s thoughts and methods of procedure regarding 
the stipulations effected by him in France, which proved so favorable to America. In the 
threefold character of statesman, of man in private life, and philosopher, is this repre- 
sentative American presented to the reader. — The Chautauquan. 

There is little, perhaps, which is absolutely new, but this work brings out in stronger 
and clearer relief the rare qualifications which Franklin possessed for his task and the debt 
of gratitude we must always owe to his memory. Dr. Hale and his son have brought to- 
gether, in addition to well-known letters and documents, many important papers now first 
published, and have presented a picture of great force and vividness of the difficulties 
which Franklin had to encounter in Paris, and which he met with so much tact and so 
serene a temper. The story must be read as a whole, and any attempt to select character- 
istic extracts from these new letters would only give a very inadequate impression of their 
intrinsic interest and of the services which they help to illustrate. — Boston Post. 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, BOSTON. 


MR. HALE’S BOY BOOKS, 


STORIES OF War, 

Told by Soldiers. 

Stories of the Sea, 

Told by Sailors. 

STORIES OF ADVENTURE, 

Told by Adventurers. 

STORIES OF DISCOVERY, 

Told by Discoverers. 

Stories of Invention, 

Told by Inventors. 


Collected and edited by Edward E. Hale. i6mo, 
cloth, black and gold. Price, $i.oo per volume. 


For sale by all booksellers^ or mailed post-paid on 
receipt of price by the Publishers.^ 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, BOSTON. 


THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY 


BY 

EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 


ILLUSTRATED EDITION. 



PORTRAIT OF THE AUTHOR. 


Illustrated by F. T. Merrill. Square i2mo. Full gilt. 
Cloth. Price, $1.50. 

This is one of the very few books that every American at least ten 
years of age ought to read without fail ; and the present edition is good 
enough for the best man or the loveliest woman in all this blessed land. 
Boston Beacon. 


ROBERTS BROTHERS . . BOSTON. 


Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


Mr. Tangier’s Vacations. 

A NOVEL. 

By EDWARD E. HALE, 

AUTHOR OF “in HIS NAME,” “ THE MAN WITHOUT A COUNTRY,” ETC. 

i6mo. Cloth. Price, ^1.25; Paper covers, 50 cents. 


The Rev. E. E. Hale tells of “ Mr. Tangier’s Vacations,” of what a young 
overworked lawyer did in the village where he went to seek rest for a tired 
brain. Of course the book has a purpose, — the one great and beautiful purpose for 
which Mr. Hale has lived and preached and written and talked all his life, — to 
induce people to help each other, to work together in order to make life better, 
more sunny, and happier in every way for all sorts and conditions of men. 

The love stories in the book are delightful : the love is so manly and honest, so 
sweet and so true. In these are found again the worth of together . That 

word is the summing up of the story, as it is also the one that solves many of the 
riddles of life, that cures many of its sorrows, and lifts one above many of its 
annoyances. 

Rlr. Hale is always a preacher of help, health, hope, and happiness. He 
makes a man thankful that he is not alone in the world, but is one of the people; 
he makes him glad of his social duties, and hearty in fulfilling them ; he teaches 
lovely home life, friendly neighborly life, good citizenship, practical Christianity, — 
in fact, there is nothing good which Mr. Hale does not teach. — Mrs. Goddard, 
in the Worcester Spy. 

It is a specially cheerful, helpful, and inspiriting book, dealing with the re- 
newed health and novel interests found in his vacations by a worn-out business 
man, who at last comes to realize the sound truth of Mr. Webster’s maxim that 
a man can do more work in eight months than he can in twelve. On a slender 
thread of story, in which are twisted two love affairs, Mr. Hale has hung many 
sensible reflections on the true relations between citjr and country life, on ways to 
promote sociability, on questions of schools and music and the summer boarder. 

— Home Journal. 

“ Mr. Tangier’s Vacations,” by Edward Everett Hale, is one of the brightest, 
wisest, and happiest books that have yet been written by that versatile author. 
We feel while w-e read it, or rather while w'e are carried along by it as by a sea- 
ward-flowing river, that there is nothing which he might not do if he only willed 
it. The gift of clear and rapid writing, which he possesses beyond any living 
American, would be a dangerous one if it were not fully under his control. But 
he has mastered it, partly by his sinewy sense, which will not allow him to wander 
from his object, and partly by his resolute taste, which disdains mere fluency. No 
one can write more compactly or more curtly than he when concision is needed. 

— R. H. Stoddard, in Mail and Express. 


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Messrs. Roberts Brothers' Publications. 


HOW TO DO IT. 

By EDWARD EVERETT HALE. 

CONTENTS. 

How to Talk; How to Write; How to Read; How to go 
into Society ; How to Travel ; Life at School and in Vacation; 
Life Alone ; Habits with Children ; Life with your Elders j 
Habits of Reading ^ Getting Ready. 

i6mo. Price $i.oo. 

** The little work is intended especially for the benefit of young readers, 
but it is equally adapted to give pleasure to the older members of the family 
drcle. It is weighty in thought, of acute observation, versatile in its illus- 
trations and examples, affectionate in tone, and racy in expression.” — 
A^. Y. Tribune. 

“ This is a very sensible little book. ‘ How to Do It ’ means ‘ how you 
axe to behave in society,’ ‘ how you are to read,’ ‘ how you are to live with 
your elders,’ and ‘ how with children,’ &c. On all these points Mr. Hale 
gives very shrewd, kindly advice. The first chapter, with its description 
and reminiscences of Boston as it was, will charm every readei, and tempt 
him to go further, when indeed he can scarcely fail to get much good.” — 
London Spectator. 

“It is a mistake to suppose this charming, amusing, and useful little 
book is only for young people. It is equally needed by multitudes oi 
people who have less knowledge than years ; parents who do n t know 
‘ how to do it ’ any better than their sons and daughters ; men and women, 
well informed in current matters of interest, but who do not know how to 
read, or write, or talk, or travel, or go into society, or even behave at church, 
m a proper manner. Let them get this book, and Mr. Hale, in his quaint, 
humorous, attractive, and sensible way, will tell them exactly how to do all 
these tilings, and more. His pages are crowded with good sense and prac- 
tical wisdom, and bright with anecdote and story, with pleasant talk and 
words of cheer, which not only show how to do it, but are sure to teach 
courage to the timid, and modesty to the self-sufficient, in doing it” — 
Universalist Quarterly. 

• 

Sold by all Booksellers. Mailed^ postpaid^ by the Puh» 
lishe*'Sf 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston. 


Messrs, Roberts Brothers* Publications 


Our New Crusade. 

A TEMPERANCE STORY. 

By E. E. Hale. 

Square iSmo. Price $i.oo. 


From the Southern Churchman. 

** has all the characteristics of its brilliant author, — unflagging entertain^ 
meut, helpfulness, suggestive, practical hints, and a contagious vitality that sets 
one’s blood tingling. Whoever has read ‘Ten Times One i* Ten’ will know just 
what we mean. The fact that thirty thousand copies of this last-named volume 
have been sold gives one some idea of its hold on the popular mind. We predicj 
that the new volume, as being a more charming story, will have quite as great a 
parish of readers. The gist of the book is to show how possible it is for the best 
spirits of a community, through wise organization, to form themselves into a level 
by means of which the whole tone of the social status may be elevated, and th* 
good and highest happiness of the helpless many be attained through the seb 
denying exertions of the powerful few.” 

From the Louisville Daily Ledger, 

“ Mr. Hale thinks, rightly, that this movement of the women of the land c 
put down an undeniable evil was not a wisely directed one. He is willing enough 
to have a Crusade, but let it be more in the line of women’s work, and let it ap- 
peal to all the best instincts of our nature, — not the resistant ones. Men are not 
going to be brow-beaten into being good, especially by the sex that has hitherio 
been styled the ‘ gentler ; ’ and we don’t much wonder at it. To come and for- 
cibly take possession of a man’s place of business, and insist upon praying and 
ringing him out of it, may have, at bottom, a very commendable motive to insti- 
gate it ; but there is a right and a wrong way of doing every thing. This is the 
wrong way. Now, in his ‘ New Crusade,’ Mr. Hale gives us the clew to a much 
Mer, more reasonable, and altogether more popular way of exalting the aod&i 
tatus in any given community.” 

— • 

Sold everywhere by all Booksellers, Mailed, postpaid, Oy 
the Publishers, 


ROBERTS BROTHERS, Boston- 





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JUL 12 1905 


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JU'i. 12 1905 


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